Though I did greatly enjoy the first book in the series, I liked Guarded even more. Dev, the love interest, didn't give off as much of a macho vibe as Seth, and he didn't give Shelley, our female MC, any presumptuous nicknames like Seth did with Jules. I also thought that the romance built much more naturally in this book, where the situations that brought Jules and Seth into contact felt very contrived.

Much like the first book, the mystery of this one was good and I didn't foresee the ending (though in all fairness, I don't think the author really gave us enough information to figure it out in advance to being told). I did think it was kind of strange that Dev seemed to have very little inner conflict about whether or not to handle things by the book when Shelley ended up involved in the crime; that being said, different people would handle that situation with varying degrees of hesitance, so I suppose this could be realistic.

One complaint that I had was that, even though several scenes take place in Shelley's veterinary clinic, no real veterinary medicine happens on screen at all. The book never pretends to be any kind of medical drama, but I felt like Jules did several florist-y things in her book, and as a vet student myself, I was excited to see veterinary medicine in a novel. The fact that I didn't disappointed me, and probably only me.

Aside from that, my only real complaints were minor inconsistencies or other brief, strange moments. One that particularly sticks out to me is at the very beginning of the book, where the main character, who has the ability to communicate with animals, recalls that she hadn't communicated with a dog since the day her childhood one died. Immediately afterward, she communicates with a dog with no problems. Later, it was mentioned conveniently that this dog was the only one who didn't seem to have a problem with communicating with her, but I thought that should have been mentioned from the getgo. Also, no reason was ever given for that one individual dog to communicate with her when no other ones did. After his role in the opening of the story, I don't remember him ever coming up again.

In general, though, this book was very enjoyable and I definitely intend to get my hands on the third one eventually and find out how the sisters' story ends. ( )

This book started off a little slow for me. But once Shelley and Dev hit the road to go to Tidewater, it really picked up for me, and I ended up enjoying this quite a bit. Shelley is a veterinarian who is able to communicate telepathically with animals. This really comes in handy in her job, and in solving the mystery of who is stealing the rare zoo animals. The zoo keeps denying the animals are stolen, so clearly something bad is happening there.

This is the second book in the series. People and events from the first book are present, but I think you can enjoy this book on its own. ( )

This series is a perfect mix of paranormal, suspense and romance along with the reuniting of 3 sisters that were separated when they were young and in foster care.

Jules, who was in the first book, can see and talk to dead people, Shelley, who is the lead in this book, is a vet and able to communicate with animals and Hannah, we haven’t been told yet of what she can do.

As with the first book the heroine manages to get herself in the middle of a murder mystery that also involved animals from a zoo going missing. The hero in this one is Dev Jones who is a detective with the Tidewater Police Department who played a large secondary role in the first book. We as the readers knew he had some connection with Shelley from the past and had figured out she was the one of the sisters Jules had been looking for years. Dev is a large burley man but he has such a sweet disposition you couldn’t help but fall in love with him the moment you met him.

Even though the suspense parts of the books are somewhat dark the majority of the books are lighthearted and humorous. Shelley’s insecurities about everyone in her life either dying or leaving her was a bit over done at times but overall I really liked the story and loved her and Dev together.

Still don’t know much at all about the 3rd sister but I’m looking forward to meeting her in the next book and for all 3 of the sisters to be finally reunited.
( )

Once close friends in high school, the hero and heroine unfortunately allowed life to drift them apart. But for the hero, time hasn’t lessoned the love he harbored for so many years. Now a seasoned detective, he’s finally gotten the reason, slash, the courage to make the trip out to see her again. And it seems his timely reappearance is more than welcome. The heroine has won the job of her dreams as a veterinarian assistant and has to fight constantly to prove herself. She’s always enjoyed the company of animals to humans so when she begins to take note of mysterious disappearances of zoo animals she’s determined to find them and save them. Queue the entrance of the unnaturally beautiful and super sweet man she always believed to be out of her league. She asks for his help and it ecstatic when he accepts. Together, they secretly investigate the mystery. This book felt like a suspense novel without anything suspenseful about it. First it’s about missing animals and then about murder but the plot was never really engaged in either. The romance was nice, the only decent thing about it but even the sexual tension between the characters couldn’t save it. Sad ( )

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: A woman who can talk to animals is desperate to figure out who is stealing animals from the zoo. Luckily, she knows just the detective for the case…

Opening Sentence: The coffee sucked.

The Review:

Shelley is a veterinarian in the small town of Elkridge. Her gift for being able to talk to animals has helped her immensely at her job. All is not well in the town though. Animals have been disappearing from the local zoo. While excuses have been made for why this is the case, Shelley knows better due to what the animals have told her: someone is stealing the animals, and some new tiger cubs are the next target. Shelley obviously has no way of proving this, so she decides to call Dev Jones, a college friend who is now a cop.

Dev has had a crush on Shelley for as long as he can remember, so he jumps at the chance to see her again. His hopes to sweep Shelley off her feet go awry though when bodies start showing up and Shelley starts looking good as a potential suspect. Now, time is running out for them to find out who is behind everything. Will they be able to figure out who the culprit is before it’s too late?

I really wanted to like this book. I’m a huge animal lover, and I really liked the idea of a heroine who could communicate with animals. Unfortunately, that aspect of the book wasn’t enough to keep me from being disappointed. I found myself bored much of the time, as the pacing of the plot just felt off to me. I was also often annoyed by Shelley, specifically with her constant use of the word “frack” or “fracking” to replace a certain curse word. Using it one time is cute, but using it repeatedly got old real fast. Shelley’s reasoning for not wanting to get too close to Dev also didn’t ring true for me, and I just found myself rolling my eyes a lot, which is never a good sign.

The one bright spot in the book is the chemistry between Dev and Shelley. From the minute they see each other, there’s a spark, and I was just dying for them to finally get together. While it wasn’t enough to save the book for me, it definitely deserves to be mentioned.

Ultimately, I was just let down by this book. I figured out pretty early on how some parts of the plot were going to be wrapped up, and I just never felt any urgency to know what was going to happen. I like to try and read more than one book from a series before making up my mind on whether to continue, but I honestly don’t see myself picking up book 3 any time soon, if ever.

Notable Scene:

A huge, blurry mass appeared so quickly in front of him, it seemed to pop into existence from nowhere.

Blam!

It flew at his chest, knocking him to the ground. Dev’s head smacked the pavement. Tiny stars burst to vibrant multicolored life in front of his eyes.

The something was large and furry and pinning him. Still he managed to get his hand free. He reached for his sidearm, which…shit!…he’d left locked in the trunk of his car.

The damned beast burrowed its muzzle against his cheek and rumbled a deep, throaty growl.

A bear?

Cold fear slid down his neck. Or that might have been the animal’s bloodthirsty drool. He might be a city boy, but he’d heard all about bear attacks in small towns like this one. He held perfectly still, eyes closed, playing dead as he tried to get a sense of the animal’s size. If it were a bear, it wasn’t full grown. A cub, maybe? But a big one.

Relief at the thought evaporated at the next.

Where there’s a cub, there’s a mama bear somewhere. Dev couldn’t just lie there; he needed to protect his vital organs before the animal figured out he was still warm enough to chew on. He rolled onto his side and into a ball, protecting his head, face, arms, and torso.

The bear seemed to tighten its hold on him. Its breath coming hot and nose hair curling against Dev’s ear.

He was going to be eaten by a bear in the middle of this damned street while everyone in Elkridge was out to lunch.

FTC Advisory: Berkley/Penguin provided me with a copy of Guarded. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )