REVIEWED BY CINDY
TITLE: Velvet Claw
AUTHOR: L.J Hamlin
PUBLISHER: Less Than Three Press LLC
LENGTH: 160 Page
RELEASE DATE: January 8th, 2018
BLURB:
Evan Kidd journeys to a small town to solve the mystery of what’s making children sick—but only cat people are allowed in the town without permission, and Evan’s permission is granted on the condition he be constantly escorted by a guard.
Rene is assigned to be Evan’s guard, and he doesn’t like humans, and he especially doesn’t like doctors. But Rene is also lonely, and despite his best efforts, hating Evan is not as easy he’d assumed it would be.
REVIEW:
I grabbed this story because I think the premise is wonderful and I love shifter stories. I’m also a fan of this author so I jumped at the chance to review it.
Evan is a good man who is doing everything in his power to make the world a better place.
As a doctor who specializes in viruses he is called in to help an old friend find a cure for sick kids in his community.
Rene is a man with a tortured past who has good reasons for distrusting humans so when he finds himself assigned to guard the good doctor, he’s not very happy about it.
I liked this story and I really wanted to love it, but there were some things about it that bothered me.
First let’s go over what I liked. Both Evan and Rene are characters that are really easy to relate to. Evan is sweet and caring with just enough steel underneath to not come off as wishy-washy. He’s one of those people who goes out of his way to make others smile.
Rene definitely comes off as a bit of a jerk at first, but when we find out why, its understandable. Once he lets himself get to know Evan a bit, he easily let’s go of his attitude and becomes much more likable.
The author has done a good job of building a good place for the characters to inhabit, and it’s easy to imagine it in my head. The side characters are really nothing but plot advancers but I can forgive that because the main characters are wonderful.
Also, the sex is really well written. Hot and steamy without going overboard and I like that Evan and Rene actually talked about their problems and didn’t solve anything with sex.
The biggest issue I had was that there was a little too much going on plot wise. I won’t spoil anything, but it felt like there was too much stuffed into this story. It was a little rushed for me. I would have liked to have seen a little more anticipation building…a little more fleshing out if you will. And maybe the secondary plot line needed to be in a sequel.
Another problem I found was with the editing. I found some missed words in a couple of chapters and I think some of the dialogue could have used some re-tooling.
All in all though, it was an enjoyable story but it didn’t blow me away as much as would have hoped.
RATING: 
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