Reviewed by Kimberley
TITLE: Taming the Lion
SERIES: Lionhearts #2
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Coldwell
PUBLISHER: Totally Bound
LENGTH: 172 pages
BLURB: Will he sacrifice everything for the sake of his human mate?
Thwarted in his efforts to become head of the Amsterdam pride of lion shifters, Kaspar de Wit flees to England. He finds himself in Bath, home of the biggest English pride, and begins to make a new life among friends. What he doesn’t know is that he’s moved to a city steeped in bloody ritual. Destiny seems to have drawn Kaspar to the place where he’ll meet his mate–but does something more horrifying lie in wait for him, too?
Jon Fellowes, professor of archaeology at Bath University, is obsessed with the standing stones that dominate the Somerset landscape and the people who raised them. He’s heard tales of strange creatures, half-man, half-lion, that once roamed the land, but dismisses them till he meets the beautiful Kaspar and learns the bizarre truth of his nature. As an ancient rite is revived and terror stalks the countryside, can Jon and Kaspar overcome the natural distrust between humans and shifters to find true love? Or will one of them be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice?
Reader Advisory: This book contains scenes of voyeurism, MM orgies and bloody violence.
REVIEW: I don’t know quite what happened with this story. When I read a shifter book, I like for there to be a consistency as far as the shifter lore is concerned. This book broke away from the traditional lore and went off in a completely different direction. Now, I usually don’t mind stepping outside of the box; I am all for it, but this may have been just a tad too outside of the box. This had absolutely nothing to do with the author’s writing style or editing or anything. It was more to do with the characters. Kaspar is supposed to be an alpha. A lion shifter, king of the jungle, strong and proud, fierce even. But what happens? He takes off when he doesn’t get the position of alpha that he wanted, that he felt entitled to. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that as it seemed so un-alpha like. Reading this, I wasn’t convinced Kaspar was an alpha. There were certain other aspects of the book that threw me off as well. The fact that Kaspar, a shifter whose sense of smell is supposed to be heightened couldn’t scent harmful drugs in his drink; wine, I think it was. But he has no problems scenting his mate, blood, dirt and so on. Not only that, but it seemed quite odd to me that Kaspar needed his human mate to rescue him from other unarmed humans.
What I did like about the book was that the author injected a bit of the traditional British food, culture and such that is popular with that particular area of England.
Although well written, I think the author may have stepped a bit too far outside of the box with this one.
RATING: 
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