Liquid Silver Books, $5.25, ISBN 978-1-59578-388-2
Fantasy Romance, 2007
Poor Paige Woods. Her biological clock isn’t just ticking, the sound is positively deafening now that she’s 38 years old. However, it gets better: she meets the hottest guy she’s ever seen in a gay bar. She is a little miffed that he is trying to pick her up – does he think that she’s a transvestite or something? – but little does she know that Vincent Mano is a Greek wereleopard who immediately recognizes her as his mate. Oh well, at any rate, I’m sure you know where the whole “mate, mate, mate” stuff is heading, right down to the obligatory creepy stalker material where he pulls a Jolly Roger on himself while she is asleep before climbing into her bed.
Wicked Shift sees Celia Kyle taking the trouble to establish the pack structure of the shapeshifting prides who seem to take a page from the Roman empire by having a ruling council called the Scisco Concilium. Poor Vincent may be the Alpha of Pride Manos but his mother is constantly henpecking him to marry some woman from a powerful pride and to find a way to become the Rector (head of the Concilium) just like his father. But all those details never truly come into play in this story apart for some superficial objections from his mother regarding his eerie infatuation on Paige, which makes me wonder why the author even bothers with the details in the first place.
At any rate, instead of calling for the cops when she discovers Vincent in her bed the morning after, she worries about her fertility clinic sessions (she wants to have a baby, you see). I suspect that the fuse in her brain has probably gone off along with the alarm of her biological clock. The rest of the story is pretty much Vincent stalking her like a complete creep until I wonder why oh why Paige doesn’t run straight to the cops. Vincent is truly creepy in how single-minded a stalker he is.
I don’t care if he is hot or he has super-magical sperm that can give Paige a million babies. The so-called romance in this story weirds me out too much for me to enjoy the story.
