Bite Me by Shelly Laurenston

I can't believe I haven't found Shelly Laurenston before this.  I've been enjoying her books -- fast, fun, and fluffy. And the character building is fantastic. Livy, our heroine, is a honey badger shifter. And like her animal counterpart, she has a fairly bad attitude about life in general. It doesn't help that her family likes to steal things -- that part doesn't bother her, but the fact that they refuse to acknowledge her prowess as a photographer does. 
Vic is a half-bear-half-tiger shifter. Apparently he's generally strong and patient but easily startled. He and Livy have been friends for awhile (yes! one of my favorite tropes!) but he is only just now starting to realize that he might feel more for her than just little sister vibes. And Livy feels the same. But she's also distracted by the fact that she's just found her father -- her supposedly dead and buried father, in another woman's apartment. So there's that.
I hadn't read any of the other books in this series the first time I read this book but I was able to catch on fast to the world building. There were a LOT of extra characters that I assumed were from previous books and they were but there are pretty much always this many characters in the books of this series. 

Four stars
This book came out March 25th, 2014
This book follows Wolf with Benefits 
Followed by Hot and Badgered (new series but closely connected with this one)
Ebook I borrowed from Overdrive
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

Wolf with Benefits by Shelly Laurenston

Antonella "Toni" Jean-Louis Parker has pretty much given up her life so that she can care for her parents and her ten siblings. See, they're all geniuses while she's the "normal" one who can cope with the day-to-day but her friends and some of her family (mostly her father) have decided that she needs to get her own life so they've conspired to get her a job.
Ricky Lee Reed works for his brother's security agency. He meets Toni one day and is interested, until she turns him down. But their paths keep crossing and he is consistent in his interest.
I liked this one. Toni didn't get on my nerves as much as come of the other heroines in this series and was actually pretty good at her job once she figured out that she could do it.

Four stars
This book came out March 25th, 2014

Follows Bear Meets Girl
Followed by Bite Me
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

Bear Meets Girl by Shelly Laurenston

Lou Crushek is a bear shifter who doesn't like change. At all. So when he's transferred with no notice from his police unit to the one containing all shifters, he's not happy. Who cares if his former foster mother, the head of the Bears Protection Agency, has basically doxxed him? He's also not excited to have picked up a female who seems to relish teasing him about their "dating" life.
Marcella Malone knows that Lou isn't her boyfriend. But he's so fun to tease. And it turns out that her work with the feline protection agency overlaps an investigation that he is very much an important part of. 
The more I read this book the more I enjoy it. Cella has a sly humor that makes her a great character for the series.

Four stars

This book came out March 27th, 2012

Follows Big Bad Beast
Followed by Wolf with Benefits
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

Big Bad Beast by Shelly Laurenston

Dee Ann Smith, the feared wolf-shifter who's not afraid to kill, gets her HEA with Ulrich "Ric" Van Holtz in this book. He's loved her since they were children and, despite the admonitions of all of those around them, the two have finally started moving toward love. 
Of course, we get to see many of the shifters from previous books and there is more going on with the overarching story of people using hybrids as fight dogs. A wonderful book in the series since we get to see so much of their relationship growing.

Four stars

This book came out May 25th, 2010

Follows Beast Behaving Badly
Followed by Bear Meets Girl
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

Beast Behaving Badly by Shelly Laurenston

I like the Pride books. I like Laurenston. I did NOT like Blayne. I think Laurenston really brought through the fact that Blayne, as a wild dog, was frenetic, unfiltered, and erratic and it made for some hard reading and an unlikable character. I never really got why she and Bo were supposed to be together. No one's going to like every book in a series and this one is going to be one that I dislike.
It is better when you skim the Blayne parts. Bumped it up to three stars on the re-reads (I do re-read it often though because I can't stand to skip books in series...) because Bo is really growing on me. He doesn't try to change Blayne and her annoyingness, he loves her as she is and plans to work around her.

Three stars

This book came out May 1st, 2011
Follows The Mane Squeeze
Followed by Big Bad Beast
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

The Mane Squeeze by Shelly Laurenston

We meet Gwen O'Neill and Lochlan "Lock" McRyrie in this book. She is a tigon shifter, a hybrid, never really accepted and sometimes outright despised by other shifters. Lock, a grizzly shifter doesn't care, he just thinks she's hot. The two will have to battle her brothers, deal with a long-time feud with a lion pride, and even take part in a roller derby battle, quite nearly to the death.
Blayne is not nearly as annoying in this book but she and Jessie together can be... over enthusiastic. And the annoyingness of that comes through in every interaction.

Three stars
This book came out November 1st, 2009

Follows The Mane Attraction
Followed by Big Bad Beast
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

The Mane Attraction by Shelly Laurenston

We know from the previous book that Mitch Shaw was an undercover policeman who witnessed an act that would put a bad guy away for a long, long time. So, said bad guy definitely wants to kill him. 

Sissy Mae Smith has been friends with Mitch for awhile. So she's sort of shocked when she wakes up in the lion-shifter's bed the morning after her brother's wedding. She's even more shocked when Mitch gets shot. 

Realizing that the only safe place for Mitch is going to be her hometown, Sissy Mae sweeps him away. There they have to contend not only with the killer but with a brother that hates her and a town full of wolf shifters who definitely hate felines. 

There was a little too much going on in this book but it was still a fun read.

Three stars
Follows The Beast in Him
Followed by The Mane Squeeze
This book came out November 1st, 2008
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

The Beast in Him by Shelly Laurenston

When she was sixteen, Jessie Ann Ward was desperately in love with Bobby Ray Smith. Even though his sisters made her life hell, even though she was an orphan, even though she was a wild dog in a town full of wolves, Bobby Ray (now known as Smitty) was one of the few people who were kind to her.
But he left. And she went out and built her own pack, becoming the Alpha of a wild dog team that also does computer hacking to test security. When they meet again as adults, Jessica wants to put him in his place so she pretends not to know him. And that pisses Smitty off. Because he "knows" that she's faking so he's not going to take no for an answer (not romantic).
I had a lot of issues with the not taking no and Jessie being a little hyper but I did love her family and how they were so accepting of everyone. Except the Smiths; but there was history.

Three stars
This book came out April 1st, 2008

Follows The Mane Event
Followed by The Mane Attraction
Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as borrowed audiobook from Audible January 2024

The Mane Event by Shelly Laurenston

 I've read a later book in this series several times and decided to start from the beginning. I was surprised to find there were actually two stories in this book. They're both sort of short but they are good setups for the Pride world - just the sheer crazy fun that Laurenston has built.
The first features Mace Llewelyn who is back in New York after a stint in the army. And he's ready to track down the woman he never forgot, Desiree MacDermot. While she's never forgotten him either, she's not exactly ready to jump into a relationship with him, especially when she finds out that he's a lion shifter (she's definitely more of a dog person). But their paths are crossing pretty hard when a shifter is killed and Desiree is the cop assigned (and then quickly taken off) the case.
The second story features another lion, Shaw. He's bred twice with a couple of Mace's sisters but hasn't exactly been tied down. It was the relationship to the Llewellyn that led to him very nearly being killed in the first story. He's in the hospital being watched over by Ronnie Lee Reed, a wolf shifter when two men come into his room with guns. Ronnie Lee gets him out of there alive. 
Ronnie Lee knows that she's led a wild life (she's not allowed in more than a few countries) but she doesn't know what she's done to have run into a lion that seems to want nothing more than to settle down with just her forever.

Three and a half stars
This book came out September 25th, 2007

Followed by The Beast in Him

Hard copy I own
Opinions are my own

Reread as Audible borrow January 2024

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