Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston

Hot and Badgered (Honey Badger Chronicles, #1) (The Honey Badgers)

by Shelly Laurenston

Don’t miss the new series from New York Times bestselling author Shelly Laurenston…where honey badger shifters take center stage. As they should.

“Hot and humorous.”  —USAToday.com

 
It’s not every day that a beautiful naked woman falls out of the sky and lands face-first on grizzly shifter Berg Dunn’s hotel balcony. Definitely they don’t usually hop up and demand his best gun. Berg gives the lady a grizzly-sized t-shirt and his cell phone, too, just on style points. And then she’s gone, taking his XXXL heart with her. By the time he figures out she’s a honey badger shifter, it’s too late.
 
Honey badgers are survivors. Brutal, vicious, ill-tempered survivors. Or maybe Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan is just pissed that her useless father is trying to get them all killed again, and won’t even tell her how. Protecting her little sisters has always been her job, and she’s not about to let some pesky giant grizzly protection specialist with a network of every shifter in Manhattan get in her way. Wait. He’s trying to help? Why would he want to do that? He’s cute enough that she just might let him tag along—that is, if he can keep up …

Reviewed by Melanie on

4 of 5 stars

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My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

In this first of a spin-off series from Shelly Laurenston’s Pride series, we follow three half-sisters as they try to survive. The MacKilligan sisters have had a rough past which has left them with a few issues. Add to that they are all at least half honey badger, they have some interesting personality traits.

We start off this series with a prologue about the sisters as they are very young. Charlie, the oldest of the sisters and half-wolf, her mother took in the other two kids of her ex. Max is a full honey badger and the middle sister. Stevie is the youngest and half tiger. When Charlie’s mom dies, she gets her sisters to her mother’s pack in Wisconsin and her grandfather raised them until they were adults and then encouraged to leave the pack.

Charlie has spent her whole life caring for her sisters. She is the glue that holds them together. Max is a psychopath and will blow up at people and likely kill them. Stevie is a genius in both science and music. She also has a lot of anxiety and spends a lot of time in mental institutions for the rich.

When the MacKilligan are again on someone’s hit list because of something stupid their father did, Charlie has to gather her sisters and get them to safety. She takes them to a place outside of New York City. They end up in a safe house in a bear neighborhood across the street from the hero of the story, Berg Dunn.

So Charlie has to find out how to get the assassins off their tail. While she has to do that, she is also roped into making sure one of her cousins go through with her wedding to a very rich human who doesn’t know that he’s marrying into a crazy honey badger family.

So Berg, his brother and sister, they’re triplets, are just sweet cuddly teddy bears. I really liked all three of them. I just really love how she writes bears. They are so cute and their obsession with honey is great too (though, nothing will ever top Locke playing with his toes).

The MacKilligan sisters are crazy, but funny and a lot of fun. I can’t wait to hear more of their story.

A big highlight is that you have many characters from the Pride series. Dee-Anne Smith, Kyle Jean-Louis Parker, Blayne Thorpe, Ulrich “Ric” Van Holtz and Marcella “Cella” “Bare Knuckles” Malone, and last but not least, Bo Novikov all make appearances. There are more too. I’m hoping that Shin, the panda shifter we met in the last Pride book, who also makes an appearance in this one, will get his own book in this series. I love Shin.

This series is all about the humor and crazy characters. The romance isn’t the focus of the story, it is mostly about the crazy family while the sisters look to find the assassins. I love everything about it. So much fun. I was laughing so much. If I had read this book, instead of listening, I would’ve had so many quotes highlighted to include, but it is so hard to do with audiobooks.

Narration
I had been hoping that Johanna Parker, the narrator for the Pride series, would narrate this series, but I was excited to see that Traci Odom is the narrator. She is another narrator who I love. I thought she did a great job with all the characters in this series, and there are a lot. There are a few differences between her voices for some of the Pride characters, but the differences aren’t extreme and the new voices aren’t bad, just a little different. I loved her male and female voices. If you haven’t tried Traci, I highly recommend her. She does a great job with all of her narrations.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 30 March, 2018: Finished reading
  • 30 March, 2018: Reviewed