Judith’s review of Hour of the Lion by Cherise Sinclair.

As a dedicated covert ops agent, Victoria Morgan follows two rules: accomplish the mission and protect the innocent. When bitten by a werecat–yeah, that was a sucky day–she must investigate beings that shouldn’t exist and are hard as hell to identify. Just how can she tell if a person is human–or an animal-shifter who enjoys Bambi-sized snacks?

During her investigation, she finds a real home and friends for the first time. Sweet, right? But there’s a flip-side: the bad guys are waiting for her to turn into something four-legged with a tail, the shifters suspect her of spying, and she has fallen in love with a pair of Thumper-eating werecougar brothers.

Her duty is to expose their existence. Or she could follow her heart and protect them with all of her deadly skills.

I have become a confirmed Cherise Sinclair fan! A little over a year ago I first read her work as I found her “Shadowlands” series, her shorter story in Doms of Darkhaven, and another of her novels set in the future. Now she has given her fans an interesting paranormal romance that is set in contemporary times, but involves lion shifters, a type of shifter that is not often the subject of paranormal novels.

I have always liked wolf shifters the best because of the pack configuration of their society, the sense of family and community, and the loyalty they have as a part of their tradition. The big cats are often loners and even in real life, it is not common to see communities of big cats except the lions who live in prides. Obviously, lion shifters live in a different kind of pride as they are dealing with their human side as well as their lion personae. And in this novel, the Alpha and his brother, the Enforcer, are strongly attracted to the human who moves into their community. But why was she really there?

Victoria had witnessed the humiliation, torture, and death of a young lion-shifter, an astounding phenomenon when she first witnessed the change. The bad guys had kidnapped this young shifter in order to study him and to hopefully use him to procreate additional shifters and for that reason, Victoria was also kidnapped off the streets. Lachlan was only in his late teens, and being confined in a metal cage had weakened him. Even though Vicki had managed to free them, Lachlan died. But before he died, he asked Vicki to travel to his home town, find his grandfather, and explain how he died, and to ask his grandfather to accept her as his “gift.” Vicki didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she agreed to do so. But before she traveled to Cold Creek to carry out her promise, Lachlan had bitten her, and he had also “gifted” her. Again, she had no idea what this would mean for her in the future. Honoring her promise to tell no one about shifters, Vicki accepted an undercover assignment which would also take her to Cold Creek where she hoped to get some information on the men who had taken Lachlan and, it appeared, others as well.

It was a quiet community in the Northwest mountains, isolated and out of the way. She rented a house, found a job waiting tables in the local bar, but it was some time before she realized that the owner of the bar was brother to the town sheriff, the man who had caught her breaking into her own house because the real estate person had failed to leave the key. She was wildly attracted to both of these men–that bothered her a lot–but she also found some previously hidden maternal instincts when forming a friendship with the young daughter of the bar’s owner.

It was a while before Vicki realized that essentially the entire town was populated with lion shifters with accepting and known humans living among them. She also slowly accepted that both the Alpha and sheriff were convinced that she was their mate and claimed her. One could easily say that here is where the “fun” begins. But that would be misleading because there was a lot of story left and it was not all good. As in all of her writing, Ms Sinclair has painted a word picture of a unique community with its own unique laws and traditions, has introduced readers to the heroine and her lovers, given readers cause to feel good as Vicki is welcomed to the werecat society and was able to bring healing to Lachlin’s grandfather, and effectively became a mother-figure to the Alpha’s daughter. But the bad guys are still out there and they are getting closer and closer. There are surprises all along the way, not only for the characters but most especially for the readers and there comes a time when Vicki’s life is not only in danger from the evil humans, but also from the shifter community who have found out about her connection to the Covert-Ops agency and who now view her as a spy. Because she has become a shifter herself, she is viewed as feral and a rogue and must die.

Lovers of paranormal romances will find this a very appealing and delightful novel. But there are some genuine nail-biting segments, and while the loving is hot and the connections between Vicki and her men are strong and sexually gratifying, there are also times of deep sadness and a sense that this triad of lovers will never be able to resolve what divides them or find a way to re-establish their mutual trust. I have also long believed that every novel is the work of a person who really wants to make a point as well as tell a story, and I don’t think this book is any different. In fact, I have found that Ms Sinclair’s work has always had an instructive bent while entertaining her readers. So it is here. Loving and family connection is endangered by old fears and prejudices, by a paranoia that may be accurately rooted in the responses of outsiders to shifters, but which is equally destructive internally when allowed to permeate the decisions and actions of the community. The prejudice of traditionalist shifters against humans is a case in point.

I highly recommend this novel as one that I think paranormal/shifter romance lovers will enjoy and one that just might land on your favorites or “to be re-read” list. I know I have already re-read it once and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. I don’t think you will want to miss out on this one.

I give it a rating of 4.75 out of 5.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This book is available from VanScoy Publishing. You can buy it here or here in e-format.