paranormal

Raw Heat by Charlotte Stein

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Raw Heat
Grade – B+
Hotness Level – Inferno
Kink Level – None
Genre-paranormal, novella
Reviewed by Anne

I have been on a break from reading.  I didn’t mean to, it just happened!  I started sewing and crocheting and I had so many ideas I wanted to get to and… I just wasn’t picking up my reader!  Then when I did pick up my reader I was in the middle of a sweet Christmas romance and, as much as I wanted it to work for me, it just wasn’t working!  So, I set aside the Christmas sweets (thank you for that advice, Kate) and picked up something much darker – Raw Heat.
 
I’m a Charlotte Stein fan.  I haven’t read everything she’s written, but I’m working my way through her back list and I really enjoy her voice.  I had Raw Heat on my reader, bought at a 50% off sale at All Romance eBooks, I suspect, and I decided to try it.  It’s a novella and it’s a pretty short one, but there’s a lot of story packed into the pages.  Serena is a nurse, well, almost a nurse at an underground facility that experiments on werewolves.  See, werewolves have taken over the world to the point that just pockets of humans exist, hiding away in above ground fortresses or in literally underground cities.  But werewolves regularly attack and the humans are losing.  
 
Serena’s patient is Connor.  She cleans him up after the “doctors” have experimented on him.  Tortured him.  He is a werewolf, which means he quickly heals any damage they’ve done to him.  But healing doesn’t remove blood, so Serena comes in each day to clean him up.  And they have started talking to each other.  And Serena is falling for him.
 
The story is told entirely from Serena’s point of view, but it’s done in such a way that you clearly know Connor has feelings for her as well.  This is an erotic short, so it starts when Serena and Connor are finally taking the step to make their relationship physical.  
 
I really enjoyed the story.  It was a good hot read while being dark and complex.  All that in a short story.  From the beginning I was a bit creeped out wondering if Serena was part of an experiment she wasn’t aware of with Connor.  That bothered me, but added an edge to the story.  I think that added a bit too much suspense for my personal taste, but overall the story worked for me.

Like a Wolf with a Bone by Shelly Laurenston (Howl For It)

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Howl For It (Includes: Pride, #0.5)
Grade-A
Hotness Level-Blaze
Kink Level-None
Series-Pride #0.5
Reviewed by Anne

(Note: I only read Laurenston’s story.)

So, I am a big Shelly Laurenston fan.  I’ve been reading her stuff for a while and I love it all.  It’s not often that you can say that about an author, but her stuff is ALL good to me.  It’s set in an alternate present day where shifters (that most full humans don’t know about) exist.  One of the things Laurenston does best with her shifters is bring their animal traits into their personalities and habits, whether in human or animal form.  She’s amazingly good! Her stories are  over the top funny and over the top violent, and I just don’t want to put them down when I start them!

I just finished the novella Like a Wolf with a Bone in the anthology Howl For It.  I need to take a moment and mention just how much I appreciate those title.   There’s some nice double entendre along with a nod to the shifterness of the story.  Awesome.

So Like a Wolf with a Bone is a prequel to the current stories.  It takes place in the 70s and there’s some humor to be had from the references that come up.  Darla and Eggie are the parents of one of the most recent heroines, DeeAnn.  Like a Dog with a Bone tells the story of their courtship.  There’s so much to enjoy!

Darla is attacked by a group of full humans.  Eggie manages to fend them off, and by fend them off, I mean that he easily and efficiently kills them all.  However, Darla is hurt and unconscious when Eggie is done with the humans.  Without a whole lot of thought to it, Eggie takes her away from her home – she wasn’t safe there! – and takes her to his military base hospital for treatment.  When Darla wakes up she assesses the situation and after some initial shock, she’s fine with Eggie having rescued her.  So, the conflict in this book doesn’t really come from the two of them together, but from everyone else in the story.  And while there is a lot of humor between Eggie and Darla, it’s the squads of secondary characters that really had me cracking up!

See, Darla has lots of sisters, and Eggie has lots of brothers.  And they are all dating each other.  Yep.  In the rural area I grew up in this wasn’t uncommon.  We used to joke about the family tree growing up, but not out.  Anyway, Darla and Eggie’s siblings have a lot to say about Darla and Eggie being together.  Actually, Darla’s sisters have a lot to say.  They do most of the talking.  And then there’s Eggie’s momma.  She may not know a pacifist from a polygamist, but she’s looking out for her boy.  It’s just all good!

This story was ridiculously funny and I enjoyed it from beginning to end.  I highly recommend it!  It’s probably best appreciated if you’ve read some of the other books in the series, especially the more recent ones where DeeAnn and Eggie are mentioned.