Alisa Woods

My review is for an earlier edition of this book when it was titled “True Alpha” in the Shifters in Seattle series.
College student Mia Fiore focuses on school during the day and works nights as a bartender at a club, determined to make life better for her and her mom. But she has a secret no one knows, not even her beloved mother: Mia is a wolf shifter, and she knows almost nothing about her heritage. When three men accost her outside the club, she never expected them to also be wolves, and that another man—another wolf—would save her.
After the tragic death of his mate, Lucas Sparks gave up his pack and just goes through the motions of living while he works for his father’s dot.com business. His father’s pack and the Red wolf pack are enemies both professionally and personally, and when Lucas catches three Red wolves preying on an innocent human woman, he steps in and saves her, and inadvertently starts a pack war. Though he never expected to see Mia again after saving her life, she shows up at his dad’s business as the new intern. The heat between them boils over into a passionate affair, but then he discovers her secret. Lust binds them together, but he’s still broken after losing his mate.
Mia and Lucas are awesome. He gave her the family and the feeling of belonging that she and her wolf have always longed for, and Mia helped him heal from his pain and become both a better man and wolf. Though she’s a strong woman, she occasionally made foolish choices, but that’s to be expected since she’s only 21 (Lucas is 26).
This story has a great cast of secondary characters. I really liked Lucas’s fun-loving beta, his brother Lev. Colin, Lucas’s rival for Mia’s affection, was totally yummy. Jak is a good guy, but he’s from the corrupt Red pack (I’m definitely interested in learning more about him). I wish the bad guy, Mace, would’ve been properly dealt with, but I think he plays a big role in book 2 (Jak’s book), so hopefully he’ll face justice then. Mia’s human friend and college roommate Jupiter was funny and often lightened up tense situations. I don’t know why Lucas’s father never had a name, but his character was interesting too.
Though I liked the story a lot, the constant description of scenery and emotions slowed the pacing. It’s well written, but there were a few minor typos and loose ends not tied up.
This book was originally released as a six-part serial, but all the parts are included in this collection. The third book in the series, ‘True Alpha Christmas,’ continues Mia and Lucas’s HEA. I’ll be reading that next.
4 Stars… (meer)

My review is for an earlier edition of this story when it was titled “True Alpha Christmas” in the Shifters in Seattle series.
Wolf couple Lucas Sparks and Mia Fiore are happily mated and still working as boss and intern, respectively, at SparkTech. Though all the wolf shifters they work with know they’re a couple, Lucas and Mia are hiding their relationship from their human clients, which is really starting to grate on Mia’s nerves. She wants Lucas to properly marry her in the way of humans, but he doesn’t seem interested in doing so. On top of that, Mia’s mother despises Lucas and shifters altogether, and she doesn’t even know her own daughter is one. When the truth comes out, Mia fears her happy life will never be the same.
This is a cute novella and a good conclusion for Mia and Lucas’s HEA, but I’m not sure why it’s not tacked on at the end of their official book. It answers a few questions that were left hanging at the end of book 1, so that was nice. Though I thought Mia was pretty irresponsible by not giving either her mom or Lucas a heads up about what to expect when first meeting each other, the ending was still very sweet and romantic.
As for the secondary characters that played big roles in book 1, Lev falls in love, which was super awesome. Colin is going through a rough patch, but maybe Jupiter is just the woman he needs. Unfortunately, Colin and Jupiter’s relationship wasn’t elaborated on or made official.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book but recommend reading book 1, True Alpha, first to better understand it.
4 Stars… (meer)

These novellas are the distilled essence of a very specific kind of paranormal romance.
And this kind of book comes packaged with a host of flaws but beyond these expected shortcomings, it's pretty good.
It just owns it instead of half-assed attempts at hiding it behind flimsy excuses.
The biggest flaw and the only one that honestly bothered me a bit after realizing what these books are was the insta-love.
These are just novellas so there really is not much time to build believable feelings between the characters so I can accept insta-love is a genuine solution but the way it's done...
It's bad. Really bad. "I like your ginormous cock, therefore, I am in love with you until the end of time." bad. That is not an actual quote. It is just supposed to represent the level of shallowness you should expect.
But as I already mentioned, one could argue that all aspects of this fit in this specific pnr schematic I've seen before frequently.
I can't explain what this schema encompasses exactly without spoiling things for everyone who isn't yet intricately familiar with it.

So if you are up for a quick feel-good story with a dark background, lots of steam and don't care about shallow romance this will probably be a blast for you.
… (meer)