Hello to all,
Today i will a small break in my discovery of chick lit, my goal this month, to introduce you to a new series of paranormal romance- my still favorite genre- with Pride Mates by Jennifer Ashley. Believe me i needed the change but no worries, i will review others chick lit books before the end of the month.
For now enjoy Pride Mates first the the Shifters Unbound books.!
Publisher: Berkley
Sensation
Publication: 2011
ISBN: 0425245047
Genre: paranormal romance
Violence: strong
Language: normal
sex: strong
Public: 18+
Source: bought
Collared
and controlled, Shifters are outcast from humanity, forced to live in
Shiftertowns. But waiting within are passions that no Collar can contain.
Like most Shifters, Liam Morrissey has learned
that trusting humans leads to no good. But when a beautiful attorney enters
Shiftertown alone, Liam's alpha nature leaves him no choice but to offer his
protection.
Tasked with defending a Shifter accused of
murder, attorney Kim Fraser is completely out of her depth in the mysterious
world of Shifters. To prove her client's innocence, Kim will need the help of
someone on the inside, even though relying on Liam goes against everything
society says about Shifters.
And when an un-Collared Shifter threatens both
Kim and Liam, the young attorney will have to learn to trust her unlikely
protector and face the passion she feels for a man who can't be tamed.
My opinion:
Jennifer Ashley created a complex and interesting world. In this one,
the shapeshifters had done their coming out some years ago and the humans
accepted them in several conditions; the result is that they are collared by a
special collar that hurt them as soon as their adrenaline level, like when they
get violent, goes up. However it’s not so simple, they were put in zone, as
some ghettos, and they are forbidden to have minimal rights, no portable, no
internet, no satellite, no cinema worse of all: no good education since they
are forbidden to enter the normal system and to get any diploma. Job only in
their community and no well paid.
The interactions with the human beings
are restricted and while they aren’t prohibited they are highly discouraged;
because of that the human population doesn’t know the real living conditions of
the shifters and keep the prejudices as they are still believed to be no more
than just animals, simple minded, violent beast.
For the shifters this enslavement had a
minimum of advantages like helping their populations to grow and mixing the different
clans forcing them to live together. In the past, it wasn’t the case, each
group kept to themselves and the numerous battle was bad so the pups. However, these
advantages don’t compensate their lost freedom and all the prohibitions.
We can see that Jennifer has thought a
lot about this universe and she also did a lot of research for the legal aspect
needed in her story. Sadly, it’s also a part that isn’t developed as much as I
would have liked. I would have loved to see which difficulties Kim has to
overcome in the court not only with the shapeshifters.
The characters are well constructed and
the way they lived until their first encounters has a big impact on how their
relation is growing. Liam is a
protector, an alpha, for him it’s perfectly normal to protect Kim even if she
knows nothing about it. Caught in his protector role he takes some time to
understand that there is more under that first reaction. Kim has lived in the
“normal world” she doesn’t know a thing about the shifters, not their history,
not how they live and are organised. She is unconsciously full of
preconceptions dues to the propaganda. She wants to be independent but she
needs Liam; she is fighting is dominance because she doesn’t understand it’s
importance. So they both have to make some concession and trust each other to
see more than first meet the eyes.
Score: 4/5
Disclaimer: All opinions are my own and no compensation was received
in exchange for this review
Challenges:
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| Ce livre
s'intègre dans le challenge de Natasia |
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| Book read for the 2012 TBR reading |
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