Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-613-6
Fantasy Romance, 2009
In Serengeti Heat, we are dealing with werelions. Ava Minor is a low-ranking female member of the Three Rocks Pride and she chaffs at the restrictions placed on her by her pride. When the story opens, she’s determined to sneak away from her pride and have a good time, but ugh, the alpha, Landon King, shows up at the local honky-tonk watering hole to spoil her efforts to experience one moment of unbarricaded freedom before she resigns herself to her place in her pride.
The problem with stories like this one where so much emphasis is placed on lust and biological impulses to mate is that I have a hard time believing that the characters are in love. Also, the heroine is handled in a most disappointing manner. Perhaps the author is trying to show that it is wiser than one picks battles than one can win, but Ms Andrews is trying to have the cake and eat it too here. She resorts to pride traditions that she has Landon calling “antiquated” to get her characters to have sex, but she then has Landon making moves to abolish the “antiquated” traditions that happen to hamper Ava from becoming his mate. Ava doesn’t do anything to attain her happy ending here other than to ooze the necessary pheromones to drive Landon into heat.
As a result, this story, while readable, comes off like some kind of propaganda about the power of a dripping vagina. I think I’ll read something else now.
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