What would it be like to live in a world where you are considered abnormal to those who are above the norm?

Jenna O’ Conner has been taught her whole life to hide from everyone. Never to let anyone to close enough to know that she would prefer a shotgun for her birthday over of a bouquet of roses. She’s been smothered by her over protective family so that no one learns what she truly is. Which is not human. Nor, is she considered the norm for the supernatural Other community that is benevolent enough to share this world with the humans.

In a desperate attempt to live her own life away from the small town she was raised in, Jenna obtains her dream job as the newest member on the Wilmington Police Department’s SWAT Team. What she didn’t predict was that she would run into trouble her first day on the job, in the form of a deadly, mouthwatering man named Adam McPhee. Who is also not human, but more like a wolf walking around in human skin. He’s determined to figure out exactly what Jenna is, which unbeknownst to him, could very well put her life in danger. He’s also determined to have her all to himself.

As if that wasn’t enough for Jenna to deal with, bad news blows into town. A group of extremist Shifters who think humans are cattle and factions of Others worldwide should stay within their own species – never to intermingle. Chaos ensues. Jenna has to find a way to shut them down, but in the process of trying to do that, discovers things about herself that even she never thought was possible.

Who said the wolf was what you had to worry about?
Welcome to the real world.

All of her life Jenna O’Connor was kept out of the public. She was kept as a secret from those who would want to kill her because she is a hybrid werewolf/demon. She finally broke away and became a cop like her uncle. After a few years of that she applied for and got a position on the SWAT team. On her first mission on the team she comes across an alpha werewolf by the name of Adam McPhee. She tells him, by staring him in the eye, that she’s neither submissive nor gonna take any crap from him.

She soon finds that there’s a demon on her SWAT team and he’s friends with Adam and she’s confronted by both of them. They get her to understand that they won’t hurt her and she’s soon friends with them – but Adam lets her know in no uncertain terms that he wants her for a hell of a lot more than a friend.
Jenna, Adam and her new friends soon discover that there’s something going on with an Eastern European pack and it’s up to them and her uncle, the Pack Master of America to figure out what’s going on.

The premise of this story was good. I liked that Jenna was learning about the world after being secluded her whole life; I liked Adam and his loyalty to his family and his pack; I liked that there were feline shifters that were involved in the story and not just wolves.

My problem with the book was the writing style. I didn’t care for several things – there was a ton of introspection and deep thought that sometimes went on for pages and pages. There were info dumps that were rather annoying at times when the dialogue should have been flowing instead. There were detailed descriptions of things that just threw me out of the story and all of this rolled together really slowed the book down for me. I honestly think this book could have been about 75 pages shorter – at least – and it would have been so much better.

Jenna was a really strong character and I loved that about her. She wasn’t afraid to show her strength and stand up for what she believed in. Saying that I thought her attitude could sometimes be uber annoying. She would step us and try to show how tough she was and it just made me like her less. Her set downs seemed forced and they just didn’t flow like I thought they should.

Adam was a great character and as I said I really liked him a lot. He wanted to push her into mating with him but as Alpha as he was he didn’t force her into anything that she didn’t want to do and let her make up her mind on her own.

The part of it that had to do with the other pack was interesting but I didn’t feel it was as fleshed out as it could have been. The “team” did all of this work to try and figure out what was going on but when it came down to it nothing was resolved. They did get info but we just got a little bit of info in the Epilogue and I found this dissatisfying. This was issue that I had with a couple of parts of the book. Jenna was introduced to a family member that she previously didn’t even know existed and yet they never actually talked much about anything or “how the hell could we have been kept apart for all of these years”, it was just accepted and they moved on. IDK, it kind of felt that that was done a few times – things brought up and not resolved – and I found it frustrating to not get more info in the end.

Overall the book was just ok for me. I honestly had to struggle at times to get through to the end and that’s never a good thing. I don’t know that I would read more from this author unless I heard that their writing had tightened up and gotten a bit more focused.

Rating: 2 out of 5