Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Jamie
SERIES: Whitedell Pride Series #1
AUTHOR: Catherine Lievens
PUBLISHER: Extasy Books
LENGTH: 126 Pages
BLURB:
Sometimes even a small decision can change your life.
Jamie is a normal guy with a normal, if not boring, life. Everything changes when he goes camping and stumbles on a well-guarded secret in the woods: shifters exists! It opens a whole new world to him, a world he wouldn’t have thought possible outside a novel, and he has to decide if Ward is worth the changes that are turning his life upside down. Ward has searched for his mate for a long time, and now that he has found Jamie, he will do everything he can to keep his gorgeous human, even face jealous exes or try to convince Jamie to get over his fear of relationships. He needs a chance, just one, but just as Jamie begins to trust him, things starts to crumble.
When Jamie disappears, Ward looks for him, but without clues, how can he find his mate? Will he find Jamie in time to save him from a horrible future?
REVIEW:
Jamie knew this wasn’t a good idea. Still, he had decided to come camping on his own. And now he was there, in his small tent, with a storm outside and barely anything to eat. It wasn’t his fault he’d forgotten to take the bag in which he had packed the food! Just like it wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t checked the weather forecast before leaving this morning. How was he supposed to know a storm was heading his way? His brother wouldn’t come back to get him before tomorrow, and of course his cell phone had died, so Jamie was stuck in the middle of the woods, alone and hungry.
Okay, has everyone got the same impression as me? That Jamie is a classic TSTL character who really deserves whatever he gets? Because it goes on further, trust me. Next he hears an animal growling so he wanders into the dark woods to investigate. I hadn’t even finished the first chapter and I had already decided Jamie needed to be killed off and a main character with more sense needed to take his place. But then his brother points out that if Jamie had been in a horror movie he would have been murdered, which left me kind of confused. Is it considered bad form for me to complain about a character if the author is obviously aware that he’s a complete dummy but obviously wrote him that way on purpose?
Further on in the book and Ward is explaining to Jamie everything about shifters. It almost felt like he was reading from an Animal Planet statistics card, and I thought – wow, info dump. But then it happened again! Ward acknowledges that it was an information dump. It’s like the author could read my mind!! So, my question is, can authors do these things that reviewers often complain about as long as they make a point of saying – yes, I know what I did? Well it surely worked at confusing little old me so I say, well played.
But, moving on. I was about a quarter of the way through the book before I felt hooked on this story. Once Jamie and Ward start their tentative dating the story became much more interesting to me and I actually began to get a better feel for Jamie’s character. Or maybe it was more that at that point in the story he starts to calm the f@#k down and I stopped wanting to shake the life out of him. Somehow the author even made me like Jamie, which after my first impression I didn’t think was possible.
What I enjoyed most about this story are the secondary characters. Jamie’s brother and Ward’s best friend were both fun when on page and they livened the story up. The addition of the rescued characters to the giant house of feline shifters is obviously setting up for the next books in the series. Which I am really hoping will include a ménage.
While no part of this plot is unique it’s a popular storyline that I think a lot of readers enjoy. I always think if you can rehash a popular plot and still make it interesting, well then I’m more than happy to read it. Honestly, it’s going to take another book or two until I’ve formed a solid opinion about this series but I can say that I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: