I've read and reviewed five previous books from this author and liked them all, but this one? No. I do judge a book by its cover because I've seen so many where the cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the story it conceals. I can't say a lot about this cover model because I don't know for sure, but it looks once again like the cover illustrator maybe got the ethnicity wrong. Maybe. What I can say is that while the cover of this particular volume isn't bad, the covers for this series - from the ones I've seen - are downright exploitative, slutty, and insulting and I refuse to read any further on that basis alone.
The main character is supposed to be an American Crow Indian, so of course she's named Jade Crow like somehow we won't get it otherwise. There are two other American Indians also in the story but they don't get to be called Nez-Perce! Go figure. For some reason they have a Jewish-sounding names. This is the second character named Jade in the first six of these stories, which means there's a problem, and it's not just because of that. It's from the fact that six 'different' stories from six different authors have all somehow ended up sounding largely the same. This is what's known in literary circles as 'a very bad thing'.
So this is number 6 out of an introductory volume of seven stories by various authors. It felt more like number two. It's a shape-shifter story which is far from my favorite genre. The thing began going rapidly downhill from page three when the main male character showed up and was described as what I can only imagine had to be a pre-menstrual fantasy man: "...a Hollywood version of a Norse God. About six foot six with shaggy white-blond hair, features that a romance novel would call chiseled, and more lean muscle than a CrossFit junkie." No. It's you, Ms Author, who described him like this, not some romance author, so why are you describing him like a bad romance author would? I am so tired of this being the standard go-to description. Most guys don't look like this and it's insulting to guys to describe this appearance so consistently, like it's the only guy worth knowing. It's just as insulting as authors decribing women in equivalent shallow fashion.
Despite this and the severe misgivings it induced, I read on, only to have my worst fears confirmed about where this story was going, which was nowhere fast. It turns out this guy is a 'Justice of the Council of Nine'. What's that? The shifter supreme court? These sorts of novels always have councils. It's so tedious. Who gets to be on the council? Is there a shifter election? Or do they savagely fight it out and the alphas get to rule the weak? And why is there one single guy who gets to be "judge, jury, and executioner"? It's nonsensical. Especially given how whack this guy is. He blunders in, accusing Jade of being a murderer based on a vision. Seriously? Is this how he operates? Snap judgments without so much as an investigation? The guy is a dumbass, period. He's the male equivalent of the insulting and stereotypical blonde ditz.
I reached chapter three and read this: "My whole body, all my senses, was aware of the huge, handsome man only inches away from me." Seriously? This is after he unjusifiably accused her of being a murderer, and they'd gone next door to the Leprechaun's junk shop and found a stuffed fox which actually turned out to be the mom to one of Jade's friends. That was freaking hilarious to me, which I'm sure wasn't what the author intended. But after all this, all she has on her shallow mind is this huge handsome man? Fuck that shit. I ditched the novel right there and moved on to the next one in this increasingly sad collection. This particular story is garbage. Period.
