This eleventh, and according to the author penultimate book of the ‘Southwestern Shifter’ series, is all kinds of unexpected, exciting, and making me sadder than ever that this series is supposed to come to an end. On one hand, considering all the action and everything that happens in this book, it’s hard to believe that the author will manage to tie up all the loose ends in just one more book. On the other hand, a few of the plans Nathan and Marcus are beginning to make would mean that this stage of their lives will come to an end, and something else is about to begin. It’s been a tough few years, what with all the fights, assassination attempts, and other threats Marcus’s pack has weathered. All of that comes to a head during the Alpha Anax conference, and the latest violence is the catalyst for Nathan and Marcus to decide that enough is enough.

I loved that Nathan and Marcus are featured as the main couple again in this book. It makes sense since the story may have started with Gabe and Mika, then Adam and Todd pairing up, but the story arc kicked into high gear with book three, when Marcus and Nathan found out they are mates. So now they are the couple who get to decide what’s next for the shifters of their pack, and to some degree to all of the North American packs, since Marcus is their Alpha Anax, the alpha of all the alphas. Marcus’s idea and Nathan’s resulting plan are brilliant, and I can’t wait to see them pull it off in the next volume. The fact that they decide to have children via a surrogate, the pack doctor Shania, is not just great fun and very exciting, but also focuses them more on the future than they have ever been before.

The totally unexpected and very exciting appearance of an unknown pack of shifters, all abandoned children, including their seventeen-year-old alpha, Milo, is another fascinating development. One of them has some very special abilities, and I suspect he will have a major role to play in the next book. I certainly hope so!

If you like series with an overall story arc that successful spans the entire series, if you want to know more about a couple struggling to do the right thing not for their relationship but for all the people/shifters they are responsible for, and if you’re looking for a read that is action-packed, suspenseful, revealing, and very imaginative, then you will probably like this novel as much as I did. Make sure you read this series in order – it’s not just difficult to understand what’s going on if you don’t know the background, it’s also well worth reading all of the stories. Their interesting, star hot couples with tough obstacles to overcome, and are set in a fascinating and pretty unique paranormal world.


NOTE: This book was provided by Pride Publishing for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews. ( )