Tiger Striped (Shifters Unbound, #11.5)

by Jennifer Ashley

[Melanie]

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

Tiger Striped is a novella set in the Shifters Unbound series. In this series, shifters are under strict regulation by the human government. They have to wear collars that will shock them if they “too” violent. They are also not allowed to have the most up-to-date technology, have certain jobs and are required to live in special communities called “shifter towns”.

This story follows Tiger. He is a shifter who was bred in a lab and was kept in a cage most of his life. That is until the Austin shifters came to his rescue and he got his HEA in Tiger Magic (book 5). He continues to be a integral character in the series. While he is a bit wild and only wears a fake collar to trick the humans to think he has one, he is also a protector. He has quite the way with children. He also has a knack for just “knowing” things.

So this book starts off with Tiger being woken up from a sleep being “called” from somewhere. He doesn’t know who needs his help or where exactly he needs to go to help them, but the call is more than he can handle, so he must go. His mate, Carly, refuses to let him go alone. The young Connor Morrissey stowed away to help too.

This is a short, but fun story as Tiger travels across state lines (another thing shifters aren’t supposed to do) to save someone who is calling out to him sublimity. It is great to see Tiger and Carly together and to spend some time with Connor, who has been a fairly minor character in the series (I hope he will get his story soon, but he is still considered a cub, even in though he is in his early twenties). The suspense and action was fun too (I can’t say more, because spoilers).

I think you could read this novella without having read the series. I think that the author does a good job of giving you what you have to know to understand the world (even if you don’t understand everything about this world, you get enough to understand this story). That being said, I think you will better understand the story if you read the whole series. There are also some minor spoilers for earlier books in the series if you read this one first.

Narration
I’m so glad that Jennifer Ashley was able to get Cris Dukehart to continue the series now that she’s self-publishing. Cris has done a great job with the narration of this series, which is long and has a large cast with many different accents and age groups (including small children, which she does really well).