Title: Claiming His Fate Series: Feral Breed Motorcycle Club
Author: Ellis Leigh
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: August 2, 2014
Publisher: Kinship Press
ASIN: B00MDACDQ4
Rebel Lynch has spent two hundred years searching for balance between his human side and his inner wolf. As a den President of The Feral Breed Motorcycle Club, a lack of control over the beast within isn't just a pain in the ass, it's a death sentence. One served by his club brothers: the judges, jury, and executioners of the wolf-shifting community.
At Amnesia Gentlemen’s Club, customers and staff check their real-world identities at the door. Charlotte, one of the club's best waitresses, ditched her legit career in corporate IT because she needs the kind of income those pesky IRS folks can’t track. When the smart-mouthed bombshell pulls a gig serving a private party, she expects nothing more than a few extra tips. That is until dirty-talking Rebel Lynch strolls into the room looking like sin incarnate, flashing motorcycle club colors, and blasting Charlotte's expectations about work, life, and love straight to hell.
One glance at Charlotte and Rebel knows she's his fated mate. But a wolf shifter is attacking women at the club, threatening Charlotte’s life, and putting the entire shifter community at risk of exposure. Rebel and his Feral Breed MC brothers must find the crazed shifter before he strikes again. If Rebel can't uncover the new monster in their midst—and learn to rein in the protective instincts of a fully mated Alpha—his future with Charlotte will be dead on arrival.
My rating:
***eBook available for free on Amazon***
The Feral Breed Motorcycle Club Four Corners (I think), is tasked with finding (and apprehending) a man-eater, a shifter that went beyond rogue and is now snacking on humans. And they should start looking at a gentleman’s club.
When he enters the private party they’d thrown as a cover, Rebel, the Club’s Alpha, immediately knows something’s wrong. Or incredibly right. It actually depends on an individual’s opinion. He’s found his mate. And she’s human. And she has no idea there are wolf shifters in her world. Or what being mate to one entails.
All Charlotte knows is, the guy is smoking hot and she wants nothing more than to throw him on the grounds and have her wicked way with him. Only he beats her to it, after first buying her at an auction to save her...
I was truly disappointed when I finished this story. It wasn’t that long, so it didn’t take much time, but the second half really dragged for me. Not because of the pacing, but because of the hero, Rebel, Reb for short. He could also have been called Jackass, Ass for short. It would be a more appropriate name, if you ask me, because he was more of a jackass than he was a rebel, but maybe that’s just me.
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? The beginning was great. Up to the big rescue and wolfy reveal, the story was good. Maybe a little too “explicit” as far as the start of the “mating” goes, since the heroine had no idea what mating really was and the hero could maybe have taken it a little “easy”, but hey, that’s also probably just me.
The fact is, their first scene together didn’t gel with the context of the story and the non-knowledge of humans about wolf shifters and their “rituals”. Also, it didn’t gel with all Jackass’ proliferations about not being dictated to by the wolf, of keeping the wolf at bay...Of basically rebelling his nature.
Otherwise, it was good. Especially the suspense or twisted man-eater (whom I’d called the soon as he appeared on the page, so, a little predictable) part, but alas that was short-lived, and the twisted man-eater was quickly apprehended.
And that’s where the problems started.
Well, the main problem of the hero being a jackass. Yes, he was a “rebel”, yes, he was more than two hundred years old, but a smart man (or beast) should’ve been acclimatized to the century he was living in. Well, he truly was a “rebel”, because it seemed everybody else around him, even wolves older than him, knew they were living in the twenty-first century and acted and though accordingly.
He also had a human mate who until recently had no idea shifters even existed, so he should’ve shown a little more consideration...But no, “rebels” don’t do that. “Rebels” demand and expect to be obeyed, they don’t know the word compromise, and women should just shut up and roll over.
What a jackass.
I don’t know how I felt about Charlotte really, since we spent more time in Jackass’ head than hers (I hated the first-person POV jumping from one to the other, couldn’t we just have had an omniscient narrator?), except she had that big TSTL moment still in the good part of the story, that didn’t endear her to me at all.
And since I didn’t particularly like either character, the “romance” thing didn’t really work for me. I couldn’t even categorize it as romance, since there was nothing “romantic” between them at all. They saw, they wanted, they fucked. End of story. They’d supposedly pined for each other in between when she left him and the Jackass pulled his head out of his ass, laid down his club, pulled on some pants, and left his cave, but I didn’t believe it. I didn’t see it. I was told and that was it.
And what do they do when they’re finally reunited? They fucked. Again. Yes, fucked. Crude, but true. There was no feeling behind any of their interactions, naked or non- (before or after, not even in the final scene, Coffee Date, which was published in the author’s newsletter and you can find it as a bonus in the Feral Breed: Volume One
set). They’re supposed to be mates, but they didn’t act like it (not even Jackass who was the one more in the know about these things). There was no romance, no love, no tenderness, not even passion, just lust and the going-through-the-motions slaking of it.As I said many times, and I repeat here, the characters make the story, and if the characters aren’t interesting, engaging, and their relationship isn’t based on something “solid”, the story suffers. This one certainly did.
2 stars, bodyguard/military/merc/gov/cop/spy, contemporary, Ellis Leigh/Kristin Harte, erotica, freebie, paranormal, paranormal romance, shape-shifters, short story/novella, suspense/mystery/adventure/thriller
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