Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: Purrfect Protector
SERIES: Shifter Protection Specialists Inc. #1
AUTHOR: S.A. Welsh
PUBLISHER: Totally Bound Publishing
LENGTH: 155 pages
BLURB:
Never play cat and mouse with a saber-tooth tiger.
Kale Andrews is dragged to the Shifter Protection Specialists Inc. office by his brother when he gets disturbing mail from an obsessed fan. He reluctantly agrees to have a bodyguard but when a the tall muscular blond walks in to the office emanating power and a sexy dose of danger Kale’s doubts about needing the man with him twenty four hours a day quickly disappear.
The easy babysitting job Aleksi was promised quickly changes from strange mail to threatening deliveries and Aleksi has to get creative to get his protectee out of the line of fire. Everyone knows models are self-centred and shallow, so why does being with Kale make him feel like he finally has a home? Being a saber-tooth tiger means that most people aren’t strong enough to be with him in a relationship or even as friends, he’s too naturally dominant. Yet Kale seems to calm his beast at the same time as exciting the man in him.
Neither men expected nor wanted a relationship with strings, but as they grow closer Aleksi realizes that Kale might just be his mate. With the obsessed fan escalating to murder, Aleksi isn’t sure even his tiger can keep his mate safe.
REVIEW:
When his brother drags him into Shifter Protection Specialists Inc. because he has been getting rather increasingly threatening mail from a stalker, Kale is resistant. He doesn’t want a bodyguard. But he takes one look at Aleski, the man being assigned to him, and changes his mind. A little shallow, yes, but that man would made a saint drool. When the danger around him escalates, Kale begins to see that a choice made by what’s in his pants, might be the only thing keeping his head on his neck, because the stalker has no problems upping the stakes. And in this game, it is likely only one of them will be left standing. It is a good thing then, that Kale has Aleski by his side.
This book ended up being rather more aggravating than it should have been. Or maybe I just need to stop going into shifter books with the expectation that less than 50% of the story will be sex. Or that at least one of the MCs will not be TSTL. Or that the bad guy will have any real characterization other than ‘evil crazy fucker.’ Maybe I should stop reading shifter stories because this has been the second one this week that has frustrated me to no end.
*buries head in hands and resists the urge to scream and/or cry*
Ok. Well, let’s find some bright side to all this, because I’m stuck having to write this review and I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. 1:30 am is not a time for doom and gloom; it’s a time for more coffee and even more fanfics. So I might as well just get on with it, so I can go back to my two great loves/addictions.
Things I liked about this book:
–The shifters. I may have a hard time figuring how a saber-tooth tiger shifter realistically is still around in this world/time, but it was something out of the ordinary and I liked it. And the fact that the animal part of Aleski’s nature actually seemed animalistic was a boon.
–The sex. Sorta. While there was a lot of it (too much for me, to be honest) it was hot. I love how these types of books can get hot and heavy because of the nature of one (or both) of the MCs. And biting is yummy. I wish there had been more biting.
–The way Aleski reacts to Kale’s job. Kale is a model, it is what he does for a living, and I really liked how Aleski may not have liked a bunch of people staring at his boyfriend/mate, but sucked it up and realized that he doesn’t have the right to demand that Kale change his job.
Now for the frustrating part (this is probably going to be a bit spoilery):
–‘Not-Barry.’ When it comes out that the stalker was not in fact named Barry, everyone started to refer to him as Not-Barry. Which made a bunch of professional bodyguards/cops look like idiots. It sounded so incredibly stupid, to hear all these people go around having conversations referencing some dude as Not-Barry. It may in fact have been true. The stalker was indeed, not Barry. But you didn’t go around calling him Not-Frank or Not-JoJo-the-Laughing-Clown before you thought his name was Barry, so why the fuck would you suddenly start calling him Not-Barry. If you do not know the dude’s name, you could just call him ‘the suspect’ or ‘the stalker.’
–The stalker. Who I refuse to call Not-Barry for above stated reasons. He is so two dimensional it is surprising I didn’t get paper cuts just reading this. He’s crazy for crazy’s sake, apparently the stalker version of James Bond, and we never really understand what the fuck is going on with him. He dies off page (I assume), by someone related to Aleski (I think), and we don’t even know his name till the Epilogue (which is only there to set up what I presume is book two). I never really feared him because A) he was such a cartoon villain that he was sure to lose and B) Aleski was so powerful that there was no way he would lose.
–The end. The last 25 pages or so of this story is wrap-up. Unfortunately, the whole book is only like 150 pages long, so that is almost 1/4 of the book right there. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing did. I just kept meandering along from scene to scene. And while some of the scenes were interesting, they really didn’t have an overall purpose to the story so it felt like they were there just to pad out the page count.
And the fact that these are not even the entirety of my issues with this book is the reason I found this book less than a stellar read for me. There was a lot in this book that could have been real interesting, but…it just wasn’t there, in the end.
RATING:
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