Her Lone Wolf

by Paige Tyler

This series bothers me. The world building around the romance and nature of shifters is just iffy. The romance is so juvenile for all there are actual sex scenes. I have so many issues with the romance aspect of this series. Everyone has a crush on someone else. It's just not very romantic to see them all hung up one another only for that person to get with someone else and then they choose someone else - it's too much like they're settling and that bothers me. For instance, Clayne is hung up on Danica but she leaves him so he decides to settle on Ivy, who ends up hung up on Landon and so he bothers Landon. Even though Clayne isn't supposed to even really want Ivy. It makes it hard to believe in the romance of a relationship when it's so lacklustre.

Are there soulmates? It's consistently referred to and then it just fizzles. Danica and Clayne can sense each other? How? Why can't Ivy and Landon? Has Clayne biting her actually marked her and changed her DNA? Clayne was able to sense her from day one so did he mark her prior to their breakup? Except she says he's never left a mark so what the hell? I find it very frustrating that such an obvious plot hole is not addressed. I like my world building to make sense. And Danica and Clayne sensing each other when shifters are supposedly genetic mutations does not make sense.

The drama between Danica and Clayne was okay. It made sense but it was pretty thin reasoning - although shouldn't a covert agent be better at reacting? She just caved to the blackmail? Surely a spy can think of something better to remedy the situation?

Kendra baffles me. I have no idea why she even likes Clayne. He barely speaks to her and usually it's not all that civil. And why on earth would you think a guy that barely acknowledges your existence would then hit it off in bed?

Ivy and Landon getting married makes no sense. How could they possibly manage to legally get married without it being flagged? It just seems ridiculous that it would be possible to hide something like that when they actually had a wedding that their coworkers attended? And how the hell does Layla (Ivy's sister) know what Ivy does? I thought it was supposed to be a huge secret and they're only supposed to know she's Homeland? Do they have permission to tell other shifters? It's just very unclear with the details. Plus since when was she a full character? She shows up and all of a sudden she's supposedly with Jayson? When did all this happen? I mean showing is great but sometimes tell can be just as important to things like my sanity.

This book was hard to read because I hate Clayne. I hated him in the first one. He was such an absolute jerk and I have no idea why Ivy and/or Kendra defended him as a decent bloke when he was just an ass. He's not as bad in this book but I already hated him and it's hard to go back from that. Danica annoyed me. She was badass but all her whinging about how hard it has been and guilt over what she did was boring. She made a stupid choice. (Caving to the blackmail.) Get over it. I don't need to keep hearing about it. And they discuss her choice for like two seconds without any real arguments and then just start calling each other babe and honey.

Adam was mentioned in this - not that I get how it fits in but it's nice that the storyline from the prequel hasn't been discarded and ignored.

The mystery was enjoyable and I didn't see the twist coming. The murderer has an identical twin brother! But the world building is iffy. This would be stronger if the paranormal abilities were fleshed out further and the plot and writing was tightened. 2 stars.