May 13, 2012

Review: The Mating by Nicky Charles

Title: The Mating
Author: Nicky Charles
Genre: Romantic Paranormal Suspense
Publisher: Nicky Charles (Jan 1st 2010)
Get it: B&N | Smashwords

NOTE:  Story is for mature readers due to some sexual content.

Goodreads Synopsis
Elise had no idea when she came home that day that she'd end up mated to a complete stranger. A new Alpha and the need for an alliance between packs have made her a pawn

Excerpt: She lay beside him, staring blankly at the ceiling. The deed was done. They were mated. It didn't matter that she had no love for him nor he for her. Political alliances were more important than feelings...



REVIEW

In order to create an alliance with a neighboring pack, Elise's father (the Alpha of her pack) arranges for her to mate with Kane, the new Alpha of the pack to the East. The thing is, Elise is in love with Bryan, one of your own pack members, whom she grew up with and who recently told her that he was going to ask her father for permission to mate with her. But knowing that it would be pointless to argue with her father, and knowing that it is for the good of the packs, she doesn't resist.

Once mated, Kane takes Elise back to his pack to get her settled in to her new life. Although Elise meets a lot of nice new pack members, there is one, Marla, who she doesn't trust or like. Marla seems to be after Kane's affections, despite the fact that he's already now mated with Elise.

Although a strong connection develops fairly quickly between Kane and Elise, Kane doesn't have much time to spend with Elise due to problems that he's having to deal with: an oil spill that contaminated their water supply, an Oil Company fighting to gain rights to part of their land for drilling purposes, and Kane's half brother who seems to be causing trouble for the pack after losing the right to become the new Alpha when the previous Alpha died.

With the pack in danger, from within it seems, Elise tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together before anyone else gets hurt.

I really enjoyed this book. I've not read a lot of romantic paranormal suspense, so this was a nice change. I've read plenty of paranormal romances, but I really enjoyed the suspense aspect. Granted, it seemed a little obvious to me who the bad guys were, and although I had one correct, the other I was wrong about. The characters were great. I really liked most of them. Can't say I was too fond of Marla, of course, but then again I hate people like her. So, needless to say, her character was written well or otherwise I wouldn't have this hatred for her. LOL

About the only thing that kept me from giving the book a five star rating was the fact that I felt that certain scenes where perhaps cut short or that there wasn't quite enough written. There seemed to be more dialog than actual narration at times. Don't get me wrong, I've read books that had so much narration and very little dialog in certain scenes and wished for more dialog. But I just felt that there could have been a little more story building at times.

Overall though, I very much enjoyed The Mating, and since there is one part of the story that is unresolved by the end, I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series to see what happens next!

All of Nicky's books are free at the following sites: Barnes & Noble, Feedbooks, Smashwords, Kobo and others. Feedbooks has one additional book by Nicky that the other sites don't offer.


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