DARK WOLF RISING Do You Believe There's that "One" Person for Everyone? ?

DARK WOLF RISING

by Rhyannon Byrd
Harlequin Nocturne on sale December 18

Bloodrunners #4
Category: Paranormal Romance
Paperback and E-Book 352 pages

ISBN: 9780373885626

Description

Eric Drake, a powerful Dark Wolf, has never trusted himself around human females-preferring to mate only within his pack. That is, until he encounters Chelsea Smart snooping around Silvercrest pack land in search of her missing sister.
Secretly, Chelsea thinks Eric is the sexiest man she's ever seen, though she is wary of his potent Alpha energy. Then it's discovered that Chelsea's sister is being held by a pack of vicious Lycans, and Eric heroically leaps into action. Now, Chelsea will risk everything-her body and soul-to surrender to the passion that will mark her as Eric's woman for all eternity...if they survive.rhyannonbyrd.com

This gets off to a confrontational start tinged with mystifying allure between the two love interests.  So you know theirs will be a rocky road to happiness. As is the way of the romance novel, there are circumstances throwing them together and then pulling them apart. 


Chelsea's background with a nasty, overbearing father has led her to a deep mistrust of all men.  His bloodline and fear of being like his father, the tenuous nature of the relationships of the pack and his current standing in the larger wolf pack contrive to make him unable to think he can have a relationship with a human.  Since we know they hook up it is the trip through these issues; mistrust to trust, self-hatred to love. As usual the path to redemption is love.

The outcome is revealed in the prologue so you know exactly where you'll end up at some point in the book.  But will it all go okay, and how do they get there?  Rhyannon Byrd brings a species of shifter  with a more common touch than the super soldiering characters from her Primal Instinct series.  These are bright, violent, loving, emotional people living on a mountain in Maryland,  in a confusing and interesting jumble of packs, and clans, bloodlines, loyalties and scandals.  But what isn't confusing is the passion and attraction between Chelsea and Eric, and it's almost comic how they are prevented from hooking up.  Then it gets about as frustrating for the reader as it would be likely for the characters.

This did stand on its own although I think perhaps the confusion over pack relationships would be alleviated by knowing the back story.  It would also help build on the friendships within the closer community of this novel.  But, it really did work on its own; you know what's going on enough without specific understanding of the relationships and past. I would like to have understood whether the shifters turn into the "wolf-man" form or if they turn into the full four-footed form.

One theme is the uprightness of the Silvercrest runners. Another theme is a common trope of the wolf mating for life with the one person meant for them; the one person who is their perfect mate and that one person is somehow identifiable through a biological response.  It's a  believable idea in the context of fantasy.

Do you believe there is one person out there for a person; for each person — does every pot have a lid? Do we mate for life or is that just for wolves?


AMAZON

AND AT BARNES AND NOBLE: Dark Wolf Rising (Harlequin Nocturne Series #152)

 












Tweet