Casket Case

Casket Case by Lauren Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book made me sad. There were some shining moments of romance, the typical “I’m over him” time, small town friends and family, but I finished the book just very sad.

I guess I should have known this was coming from the description but maybe I thought there would be more quirky goodness or lightheartedness to break up the truly dark depression scenes. Nora lost her parents and has given up her career to run her family’s local casket business. She is still firmly entrenched in her depression when she meets Garrett, who just so happens to work for Death. It was very much like that show Dead Like Me, where he gets dispatched to help people not die alone. He hides this from Nora, but pursues her pretty intently.

The truth ends up coming out, because, hello, it’s a very small town where everyone knows everything about each other, but when it does, Nora goes back into a tailspin of depression. If you’re following along, that means you will need to trudge through two separate phases where we are in this with her. It was tough. Eventually we trudge to a happy ending, but then we cap it off with a truly heartbreaking ending. The writing was good, but you need to be mentally prepared to go through all this with Nora.

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Dirty Lying Wolves

Dirty Lying Wolves by Sabrina Blackburry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I’m sure I read the other books in this world, it’s been so long that I can assure you starting here is just fine. That being said, this book has a very slow build at the start, but once things start going down, it is pure chaos until the end.

June has a relatively normal life until she tries to save a woman writhing on the ground in a local part. This one action ends up getting her bitten by a werewolf and thrown into a really weird roadtrip with her new “pack.” Dom, the second to the bitey leader who is indisposed for quite some time, is on a mission to bring his pack or sort-of-rogues back to their original pack’s land. Said pack has been led by a bad guy for a while so now that they are fresh off their win in previous books, they decide to push their luck here. June got to represent us, asking all the basic questions, learning how the change happens, how the pack is organized, and eventually detectiving out why everyone tiptoes around the badness in their previous pack history.

This book has some really great characters introduced outside the slow sizzle romance of Dom and June. I would eagerly check-in on a lot of these folks after the conclusion of this story. The pack has obviously gone through a lot, but when the dust settles (or when the truth is revealed) people do the right thing in a crazy battle. I really ended up liking all the characters and got swept away in the HEA by the end. I hope we get to see more from this world.

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Tempting the Black Wolf

Tempting the Black Wolf by N.J. Walters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am so terribly sad to see this series come to a conclusion but it is a very satisfying one. I’d recommend starting at book 1 if you are peeking ahead. They all build on one another, giving us a great world.

Onyx knows she is one of the fated mates (or traps?) for the one wolf named Dagen because she has been raised in the big bad’s lair. She never knew a normal life, but has taken her time on the run to hone her skills, maybe even enough to take part in the final battle. She’s also been fighting the pull to Dagen as they dance around one another in the search for ways to break this spell/curse/destiny. It was fun to see characters that we have met separately engage directly with one another. As the “fixer” for the other wolves, we also got to see behind that curtain in this book, too.

Dagen isn’t without his own hangups, having hidden but stayed connected to his fellow lone wolves in a way that helps them all for this final showdown. He obviously doesn’t trust easily, so when Onyx’s secrets come out, it tilts his world in a way he can’t manage through. Lucky for them, the draw they feel overrides most misgivings. It’s always great when a series manages to move the pieces around in the previous books to have a great, satisfying conclusion, and this series does just that. As someone who reads a lot of paranormal romance, this had new elements and kept me guessing about who or how many would get out alive. Oh, and there is a healthy amount of sizzle, which never hurts.

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Winter Lost

Winter Lost by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This deep into the Mercy Thompson world, if you don’t know what to expect, just turn around. These books firmly build on one another in both good and bad ways, so there is lore you need to know and baggage you need to be aware of before diving in this late.

Mercy is still very much “broken” from the events in the previous book. She tries to hide it from others but is kind of terrible at it. Also, there’s a big bad vampire out to kill Mercy & Adam, but not in this book, so moving along. This book is about Mercy’s family (sort-of) and how Adam and Mercy need to stop the end of the world. It seems like that’s an almost regular occurrence, but this time it happens during winter, involves family, and forces Mercy’s injury to become a big thing.

As a road trip-type book, we don’t get a ton of time with our favorite supporting cast, but it was nice to see Mercy and Adam be with new folks, doing their thing and just being plain awesome. Would it all be more awesome if Mercy could stop hiding things from Adam? Sure. Will that ever truly happen? Probably not. This story had a lot of really interesting elements of Norse mythology that I enjoyed and it’s never a bad time with this gang. There was sadness, love, joy, action/adventure, and everything you’d expect from Mercy’s crew. The storytelling jumps around a bit, but you get used to it by the end. It probably says something that I wasn’t willing to leave this world after this book concluded and dove into the short story anthology that follows.

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