Tag: Mandy Harbin

Guest Review: Surrounded by Woods by Mandy Harbin

Posted August 21, 2011 by Tracy in Reviews | 0 Comments

Tracy’s review of Surrounded by Woods by Mandy Harbin.

When Mikaela Patterson must take on a client with specific requirements that no single women be allowed on his property, she keeps her broken engagement a secret. She doesn’t realize her client and his sons are mountain lion shifters whose instinct to mate with any available woman turns deadly.

Josh Woods is her client’s eldest son, and he is immediately drawn to Mikaela. Knowing his father would never allow an available woman on the property, Josh doesn’t understand his fascination with her. Josh and Mikaela fight their attraction because of their own secrets, but when the truth comes out about Mikaela’s true availability and Josh’s animal instincts, they must be prepared to face the consequences.

Mikaela heads to a clients house that’s in Texas – surrounded by woods and lots of acreage. Because of its distance to any nearby town Mikaela is required to stay at the house with Thomas Woods and his four sons. This doesn’t seem all that bad to Mikaela but she has no idea that the Woods family is a family of mountain lion shapeshifters. Their need to mate is strong in their genetic make up and therefore they don’t let any woman on the property that’s not already spoken for by a boyfriend, fiance or husband as they respect the mating bonds that are already in place. Mikaela was engaged but the bastard cheated on her the month before and now she’s free. She was just so embarrassed that she never let her boss know and he thought she was taken when he sent her.

Josh Woods immediately upon meeting Mikaela is drawn to her. He feels a special affinity for her and is immediately all over her. While he was pretty crude when he first talked to her he seemed to mellow out the longer she was there. He knew he should stay away from her though and tried to but he just couldn’t do it. Pretty soon the pair are all over each other, spending the day together talking and laughing. They fall in love – but how will it work with Josh thinking that she’s married? And how can he possibly explain to her that he’s a shapeshifting mountain lion?

This was a cute book but there just wasn’t much to the story except the attraction, the submitting and then the conclusion. Neither Mikaela’s nor Josh’s worlds were explored all that much and besides their attraction to each other we really didn’t know much about them. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed in the story because of it.

The brothers seemed nice but they weren’t mentioned all that much except when they went all mountain lion on Mikaela and then they seemed like jerks. I know they were supposed to be feral lions trying to claim a mate but it just didn’t endear them to me at all.

Mikaela, when she and Josh finally were together at the end, went inexplicably alpha mountain lion on Josh – trying to fight him for dominance – and I didn’t think it fit her personality all that much. Josh loved it but he’s a guy who was having sex – as long as he got some what did he care how she acted. lol

In the end the book was cute but just ok for me.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

This book is available from Amira Press. You can buy it here in e-format.


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What I Read Last Week

Posted July 25, 2011 by Tracy in Features | 8 Comments

Happy almost end of July!!
What’s up in Tracyland?
I continue to have bizarre reading weeks as I continue to get up early. My daughter’s summer school ended last week but since I originally thought it ran until the 29th of July that’s how I planned my schedule at work. There’s only 1 week left – woohoo! I hate getting up early but I love, love, love getting off early from work. But then I hate having to go to bed earlier in order to get enough sleep to wake up early again. It’s a vicious cycle! lol
So this past Saturday I drove down and saw Holly for a girls day. We talked about family, and friends, and kids, and rhino and panther dicks (which you can read about in Holly’s post here) and laughed and ate and just had so much fun. I ended up coming home with a large stack of books to review for The Book Binge – bigger than the original pile she had to mail me. lol
Holly also showed me the wonderful app that Goodreads now has and it’s awesome! I was using the mobile site on my phone and it was kind of a pain, I must say. For those of us who still read print books it’s got a barcode scanner and you can direct the scans to exactly which shelf you want to put the books on. The rest of the app is incredibly easy to use as well and I entered all of the books that I got from Holly all in the space of 5 minutes (I had to enter some by hand since they were ARC’s). If you use Goodreads a lot, as I do, and you have an app capable phone I suggest you get this one – it’s the perfect price: free!
Update on my oldest: She’s doing great. We had a follow up with our regular doctor. He had her give blood again to check her levels, scheduled her for an ultrasound to check things out a little more closely and then set up an appointment for us with a Gynecologist so that we can talk about the cause of the cyst and how to avoid them in the future, etc. She’s back to her normal self and doing well which is a huge relief.
It’s going to be a hard week this week. My boss, the one I’ve worked for for the past 10 years, is retiring. This is her last full work week and then her last service (she’s a priest) will be on Sunday. I has a great big sad. I know that things will be ok after she leaves but I love her so much. I’m pretty sure 75% of my love for my job is her. She’s been a wonderful boss and a great friend and I will miss her something fierce.*sniff*
I was thinking this past week that I need to take a vacation and do nothing but read. I could head to my bosses cabin near Lake Arrowhead and have peace and solitude and read my ass off. Doesn’t that sound good? Of course I think I might have to make it a 3 week vacation: 1 week to read just from my m/f TBR – 1 week to read all of my Book Binge review books and write reviews – 1 week to read nothing but m/m. Heaven. It sounds like sheer effin heaven.
Oh, and I’m over at DIK today and for the next couple of days.
Enough about me…how are you? What did you do this past week or weekend that was fun and exciting? Anything.
I started the week with my TBR Challenge Read which was My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger. This was an wonderful book and I loved it. You can see my review here if you’re interested. 5 out of 5
Next was a novella for The Book Binge called Surrounded by Woods by Mandy Harbin. It was the story of mountain lion shifters who live to eat and mate. They stay away from society because if they are around an unattached female they’ll go feral, mate with the woman against her will (can you say rape?) and that has deadly consequences for both parties involved. Mikaela heads to Woods estate to help with some legal issues and she’s safe because they think she’s engaged…which she’s not any longer. Mikaela and one of the four sons, Josh, hit it off in a big way but what happens when they find out she’s not really engaged? A cute story in some aspects, and a bit ridiculous in others. 2.5 out of 5
Next was Wolfsbane by Andrea Cremer. This is book 2 in the Nightshade series and it starts off where book 1 left off. Calla is now with the Searchers but she doesn’t know who to trust and what’s happening back in her pack. She wants to get her pack and make sure they’re safe…along with Ren. Shay isn’t too thrilled that Calla is still thinking about Ren but he deals with it. Things don’t go as planned with the rescue mission and Calla finds out she has a traitor in her pack. Another good story – I’ll be posting my review this week for this book.
I started The Summer of You by Kate Noble but halfway through I put the book down. I was a little bored and though I normally like sweet, somewhat non-angsty romances this was a little too slow for me. I may go back and finish it some other time as I started and stopped Compromised as well – went back later and loved it. DNF (for now)
England’s Perfect Hero by Suzanne Enoch was my next read and it was so good! As much as I loved the story and the romance it was really Bit that made this book for me. He was just so emotionally scarred and I wanted to hug him for most of the book. The story was about Lucinda who has decided to teach her “lessons” to the fourth son of a duke but feels quite guilty about it since she’s really vying for marriage. The man, Geoffrey is courting Lucinda’s father, a general, as much as he’s courting Lucinda. Bit overhears about the lessons and offers to “help” Lucinda with them. Lucinda and Bit get closer and spend more time together and though they each say they’re only friends love grows between them. 4.5 out of 5
When I head to Holly’s I always get an audio book to listen to. This time I got Irresistible by Susan Mallery. I listened to about 4 of the cd’s before I got home and then read the last part of it via ebook. I liked the book but had an issue with the reader. I didn’t like her voice all that much and she made everyone but the hero and heroine have what sounded like southern accents. I could hear the where the lines were supposed to be humorous but frankly she didn’t have much inflection in her voice and it was all lost in the translation. She also made the heroes voice sound like he had no personality at all. I think she was going for stoic but didn’t quite manage that.
Also – a note to audio book readers: drink water. I really have no desire to hear the pastiness when you get dry mouth. Ewwww. lol
The story itself was about an ex-marine who moves into an apartment and becomes emotionally involved, against his will, with his neighbor and her daughter. It was a cute book. 3.5 out of 5
Last on the list was a soon to be re-issued book called The Husband She Couldn’t Remember by Maggie Shayne. The book is about a woman who has been thought dead for 2 years by her husband and his family who shows up not knowing who she is. I’m posting my review of this later this week. 🙂
My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:

Happy Reading!


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