In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston

I just got the excerpt of this book where Stevie from Honey Badger Chronicles book 1 and Shen from the Pride books are set up as the romantic interests. Shen has been set up as a super laid-back, continuously bamboo eating panda shifter. Stevie is a highly strung tiger-badger hybrid who is also ridiculously smart. The beginning of the book has Stevie freaking out about the number of bears in her kitchen while her sisters (normally the only ones who can calm her down) are not in the area. It's going to be up to Shen to help figure it out.
I'm a little hesitant about this book but am pretty sure it's going to be the fun ride we can normally expect from Laurenston.
After reading the whole book, I am glad to have gotten a better story than I was expecting.  We get to explore the artist side of her nature. There is a story line with shifters experimenting on other shifters, trying to make them into normal humans but the ending was a bit over the top for me and I thought the romance between the two wasn't fully planned out. I am VERY much looking forward to Max's story.

Three and a half stars
This book came out March 26, 2019

Follows Hot and Badgered
Followed by Badger to the Bone
ARC kindly provided by publisher and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Reread May 2022, January 2024

In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston

I just go the excerpt of this book where Stevie from Honey Badger Chronicles book 1 and Shen from the Pride books are set up as the romantic interests. Shen has been set up as a super laid-back, continuously bamboo eating panda shifter. Stevie is a highly strung tiger-badger hybrid who is also ridiculously smart. The beginning of the book has Stevie freaking out about the number of bears in her kitchen while her sisters (normally the only ones who can calm her down) are not in the area. It's going to be up to Shen to help figure it out.
I'm a little hesitant about this book but am pretty sure it's going to be the fun ride we can normally expect from Laurenston.

Three stars (for the excerpt)
This book comes out March 26
ARC kindly provided by publisher and NetGalley

Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston

I only got two chapters of this book as an ARC from NetGalley so I can't really review the whole book. There wasn't a great glimpse of either Charlotte (Charlie,a badger shifter) or Berg (grizzly shifter) so I'm not sure how the rest of the book is going to go. We know that Charlie has at least two sisters, one of which needs watching every moment of the day. Oh, and the book opens with men breaking into Charlotte's hotel room just as she gets a warning call. She drops down to the room below which just so happens to be the one where Cooper (famous pianist, jackal shifter) who we met in the last book is being guarded by Berg. 

I'm a little trepidatious about how this book is going to go but I trust Laurenston so I'll definitely read this book as soon as I can get my hands on it.

I did eventually get the full ARC and it was okay but there was a lot of setup for the rest of the series. I wished we had gotten to see more of Berg. It's interesting that Laurenston keeps introducing bear triplets (had been done in Bear meets Girl). Each of the characters seems to be full hilt stereotypes which is okay but I wish we had gotten a bit more nuance.

Three stars

This book comes out March 27, 2018

Follows Bite Me

Followed by In a Badger Way

ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Reread May 2022, January 2024

Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston

I only got two chapters of this book as an ARC from NetGalley so I can't really review the whole book. There wasn't a great glimpse of either Charlotte (Charlie,a badger shifter) or Berg (grizzly shifter) so I'm not sure how the rest of the book is going to go. We know that Charlie has at least two sisters (or that's the impression), one of which needs watching every moment of the day. Oh, and the book opens with men breaking into Charlotte's hotel room just as she gets a warning call. She drops down to the room below which just so happens to be the one where Cooper (famous pianist, jackal shifter) who we met in the last book is being guarded by Berg.
I'm a little trepidatious about how this book is going to go but I trust Laurenston so I'll definitely read this book as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Three stars
This book comes out March 27th
ARC of first two chapters provided by NetGalley

Howl for It by Shelly Laurenston; Cynthia Eden

Like A Wolf With A Bone by Shelly Laurenston
Darla Mae Lewis left the South for a reason. Mostly to get away from her argumentative sisters. They
tend to fight not only with each other, but with the Smith boys whom most of them are hooked up with. The last (I think) Smith standing? Egbert "Eggie" Ray. He's the scariest of the Smith boys but he'd rather be left alone than be the Alpha of the clan. When he sees Darla, he doesn't immediately know that she's his One, but it happens pretty quickly. Of course, they'll have to figure out why there's a horde of humans after Darla.

A nice start to a new shapeshifter series from Laurenston. The repetitious rhyming of the middle names was a little weird and it was a little over the top but a nice world-building for a novel.

Wed Or Dead by Cynthia Eden
I like novellas where the h/h have known each other for awhile, they're much more believable. In this case, , they've known each other long enough to be getting married as the story opens. But there's a problem; he's a shapeshifter and she's part of an elite group of hunters who have been put together to kill the "monsters."
Well, the wedding night goes well... until it doesn't . And it starts both groups toward a final battle and a crisis of conscience for at least one of our characters.
This was definitely darker than the first sorry. Good, but in a different way.

Four stars
This book comes out January 30, 2018

Pride #0.5
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Reread as audiobook from Audible Premium Plus May 2024

The Unyielding by Shelly Laurenston

Erin Amsel has been described as infuriating. Somehow, this resurrected-from-the-dead Crow has managed to piss off both gods and man alike. And she actually seems to enjoy doing it. Pretty much no one enjoys spending time with her, even Stieg Engstrom so he's not especially happy to have been assigned to following her around to the hottest clubs in town.
It's not as if Stieg is a happy guy on a regular day anyway. He's often described as the angriest viking ever. But the more time that he spends with her, the more he is attracted to her. And he wants to have her back when it turns out she's the only one who can help save the world from the coming apocalypse.  It's going to be up to both of them to dive into hell and be able to still come up swinging.

I honestly couldn't see why Erin would be pissing people off. I also wanted to know more about both her and Stieg's backgrounds. We got a gloss but no further explanations. And the same for their eventual trip to retrieve and object that would help stop the end of the world. It was supposed to be an epic journey but went REALLY fast. And I couldn't decide if I was amused or not how much Nidhogg was modeled on movie-Smaug. But I did like their romance, even with the danger boner and I especially liked the fighting with the crazy She-Elf. I would suggest new readers start at the beginning of the series but I think regular readers will quite enjoy this books.

Three and a half stars

Follows The Undoing
This book comes out March 28