Series: Honey Badger Chronicles

Guest Review: In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston

Posted April 24, 2019 by Jen in Reviews | 0 Comments

Guest Review: In a Badger Way by Shelly LaurenstonReviewer: Jen
In a Badger Way by Shelly Laurenston, Charlotte Kane
Series: Honey Badger Chronicles #2
Also in this series: Hot and Badgered (Honey Badgers Chronicles #1), Hot and Badgered (Honey Badger Chronicles, #1)
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: March 26, 2019
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 410
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-half-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

Petite, kind, brilliant, and young, Stevie is nothing like the usual women bodyguard Shen Li is interested in. Even more surprising, the youngest of the lethal, ball-busting, and beautiful MacKilligan sisters is terrified of bears. But she’s not terrified of pandas. She loves pandas.

Which means that whether Shen wants her to or not, she simply won’t stop cuddling him. He isn’t some stuffed Giant Panda, ya know! He is a Giant Panda shifter. He deserves respect and personal space. Something that little hybrid is completely ignoring.

But Stevie has a way of finding trouble. Like going undercover to take down a scientist experimenting on other shifters. For what, Shen doesn’t want to know, but they’d better find out. And fast. Stevie might be the least violent of the honey badger sisters, but she’s the most dangerous to Shen’s peace of mind. Because she has absolutely no idea how much trouble they’re in . . . or just how damn adorable she is.

More honey badgers! That should honestly be the tag line for this book, because anyone who glimpsed the MacKilligan sisters in Hot and Badgered should pretty much know what that means: lots of fighting and violent but devoted sisterly love.

This book is about Stevie MacKilligan. Stevie is the genius in the family, the one who is both a world-class scientist and a world-class musician (so far). She also has some pretty severe anxiety problems and turns into a giant raving hybrid monster when provoked. You know, as you do. There are some more fishy things happening to hybrid shifters in the world, and Stevie has to help put a stop to it. Luckily, she has Shen to help her. Shen is a panda shifter who likes his life filled with quiet and all the bamboo he can eat. The more time he spends with Stevie, though, the more he realizes he may be ok with a little disruption.

Stevie isn’t my favorite MacKilligan sister. I wasn’t that interested in her in the first book, and I still wasn’t that interested in her after her own book. It’s not that I didn’t like her, but I did think she was a bit immature. Her romance with Shen didn’t have much substance to it either. Laurenston’s books do share focus between plot and romance in largely equal measures, and this book follows that pattern. The problem was, I didn’t really see a huge connection between Stevie and Shen. Shen seemed too old, too mature for Stevie, and I didn’t really see where they could go by the end.

The plot, though, was fun. The villain is pretty cartoon evil, and it’s always fun to see Laurenston’s villains get their comeuppance. I really enjoyed Stevie’s friendship with Kyle, too. He’s another prodigy, and a very obnoxious one at that, but he actually had some personal growth in this book. He and Stevie were odd friends but they somehow worked, and it was fun to read about. I also loved seeing more of the MacKilligan sisters and glimpses of past couples from Laurenston’s other series.

There is a lot of talk about mental health because Stevie has some serious issues. The book makes a big deal about how she gets treatment, both therapy, and medication. Even her sisters seek some treatment in this book, and that’s not something you normally see in a wacky paranormal romance. It normalizes seeking help, which I like. If those topics are triggering for you, though, you may want to steer clear of the Honey Badger books.

Even my least favorite Laurenston books are always a good time. I’ll just keep waiting anxiously for the next book.

Grade: 3.5 out of 5

Honey Badger Chronicles

three-half-stars


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Guest Review: Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston

Posted August 23, 2018 by Jen in Reviews | 0 Comments

Guest Review: Hot and Badgered by Shelly LaurenstonReviewer: Jen
Hot and Badgered (Honey Badger Chronicles, #1) by Shelly Laurenston
Series: Honey Badger Chronicles, #1
Also in this series: Hot and Badgered (Honey Badgers Chronicles #1), In a Badger Way
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: March 27, 2018
Format: eARC
Point-of-View: Third Person
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-half-stars

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 . . .

A series featuring honey badger shifter sisters? YES PLEASE!

This is yet another spin-off from Laurenston’s eternally growing shifter books, and it is a great addition to the world. The series centers on the three MacKilligan half sisters: Max, Stevie, and Charlie, the heroine of this first book. The women have a crappy father who takes “deadbeat” to a whole new level. They’ve basically spent their entire lives trying to extricate themselves from their dad’s schemes and the incredible danger he constantly puts them in. (And let’s face it, they are constantly making their own enemies too!) In this book, their lives are once again in danger thanks to their dad, and they come to the attention of the secret shifter organization we’ve see in the other books, called The Group. Charlie also meets Berg, a large and sweet bear shifter. When Berg takes a liking to Charlie, he starts to help them and quickly gets himself and his two siblings sucked into the MacKilligan’s bananas world.

I love these sisters! Charlie, Max, and Stevie are all messed up in their own ways, but they never fail to support each other. They argue and give each other a hard time, but they always have each other’s back. This is some fierce female love right here. (Figurative and literally fierce–these ladies are violent and aggressive, as you would expect from honey badgers!) I also love Berg and his siblings. They are triplets, and while they are infinitely more well-adjusted than the MacKilligan sisters, they are just as devoted to each other. I know it’s rare in real life to have sibling relationships like these, but I love the fantasy in my books.

Charlie is an excellent character, too. She is an organizer, a manager, and a people handler. She’s the one who often talks them out of the messes her sisters and her dad get them into. Her talents aren’t as flashy, or scary, as her sisters’, but she’s really the glue that keeps them all together and functioning. In a way she reminded me of Toni Jean-Louis Parker from Laurenston’s Wolf with Benefits (and we see a bit of Toni in this book too), but without so much of the type-A arrogance that makes Toni a bit off-putting at times. Berg is a great match for Charlie as well. He’s a quiet, strong support for her and does so without dampening her strengths or trying to get between her and her sisters. You can tell Berg is the first person who’s simply supported Charlie without any expectation of something in return, and it takes Charlie a while to figure out what to do with that kind of love. Once she does, though, it’s adorable.

This book is very much in the vein of Laurenston’s other shifter books, but I do think the MacKilligan sisters are some of her most interesting and fun characters so far. I loved this book and can’t wait to read more.

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

 

four-half-stars


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Guest Review: Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston

Posted April 13, 2018 by Tracy in Reviews | 2 Comments

Guest Review: Hot and Badgered by Shelly LaurenstonReviewer: Tracy
Hot and Badgered (Honey Badgers Chronicles #1) by Shelly Laurenston
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: March 27th 2018
Format: eARC
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 400
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-stars

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 . . .

Charlie, Max and Stevie are all half-sisters.  They all have the same no good, thieving, idiot father who is constantly getting himself into trouble.  The problem with that is that people think they can get to their father through his daughters.  Not!  Charlie, Max and Stevie were all raised first by Charlie’s mother and then when she died, by Charlie’s grandfather in a wolf pack.  Charlie is half honey badger and half wolf.  Max is all honey badger and Stevie is half honey badger, half tiger.  They’re all incredibly dangerous and can take anyone who comes after them.  That doesn’t mean they want to.

When the girls’ father once again gets them into the middle of things, Charlie, Max and Stevie take help from an unlikely source.  Berg is a bear shifter and completely smitten with Charlie.  He offers to help house them and they end up renting a house in an all bear neighborhood. Berg just happens to live across the street so this is convenient for him to be near Charlie as much as possible.

When the girls finally figure out what they father has done to get people after them they try to remedy the situation, but a wedding their not invited to, twin aunts who have no idea they’re shifters and a psychopathic cousin make this incredibly difficult.  With help from a bunch of unlikely sources the girls try to make their lives as normal as possible.

I love honey badgers. LOL  They are tough and don’t take anyone’s shit.  They can fight anyone and probably win and have a blasé attitude while doing it.  This particular group of honey badgers made me laugh constantly.  I love the way that Laurenston writes and her characters are always so alive and so incredibly irreverent.

This was Charlie and Berg’s romance but their relationship was so entwined into the story that it was more about everything else going on.  That actually worked for me.  There was SO much going on in this book that to add more of the romance wouldn’t have felt right.

I adored Charlie, Max and Stevie’s relationship. They were constantly at war with each other, yet they loved each other dearly and would have each other’s back in a hot minute.  Charlie was very protective of her sisters and especially Stevie as she kind of had her head in the clouds.  She’s a complete genius and was in her head a bit more than she was in reality.  When people try to take Stevie for her big brain Charlie does everything she can to stop it.  The girls may not hug each other on a regular basis but I could feel the love between the three.

I can’t tell you all the little bits of this book because A) there are a lot of bits! And B) you need to read it for yourself in order to get what’s going on.  This was a fun and crazy book and I really enjoyed it.  A great start to a new series that still includes people from other series that we already know and love.

Rating: 4 out of 5

four-stars


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