Mini Reviews: Fair Game + Dead Heat

FAIR GAME
Alpha and Omega #3
Patricia Briggs
Urban Fantasy
293 pages
Ace
Available Now
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
They say opposites attract. And in the case of werewolves Anna Latham and Charles Cornick, they mate. The son-and enforcer-of the leader of the North American werewolves, Charles is a dominant alpha. While Anna, an omega, has the rare ability to calm others of her kind.

Now that the werewolves have revealed themselves to humans, they can't afford any bad publicity. Infractions that could have been overlooked in the past must now be punished, and the strain of doing his father's dirty work is taking a toll on Charles.

Nevertheless, Charles and Anna are sent to Boston, when the FBI requests the pack's help on a local serial killer case. They quickly realize that not only the last two victims were werewolves-all of them were. Someone is targeting their kind. And now Anna and Charles have put themselves right in the killer's sights...

MY THOUGHTS
Fair Game highlights everything there is to love about mated werewolf pair Anna and Charles, their growth both individually and as a couple evident as the story unfolds, with the two of them finding once again that while strong apart, they’re nearly invincible together. Anna has come so far from the abused young woman Charles saved from the brutal whims of her former pack, now able to stand strong in the face of the alpha of all alphas in Charles’s father when all those around her are forced to their knees by his power. She’s lost nearly all her fear of dominant male wolves, beautifully confident in her own ability to make sure she never finds herself in the role of victim again.

Charles, for his part, is as magnificently protective as ever, the rules Anna gives those meeting him for the first time bringing a smile to our faces because we know just how necessary they are. While he’s quite stubborn in this latest installment, seeking to protect Anna from the things that haunt him day to day instead of letting her be a true mate in every way, he’s someone willing to admit when he’s wrong, and by the end we can feel additional layers of unbreakable steel threaded through their bond when he does so. Despite the dark grittiness of this world, Anna and Charles are what could be described as a comfort couple, two people we know are going to stand strong together against everything they face without letting petty drama and angst make a mockery of everything they’ve built.

Rating: 4/5

DEAD HEAT
Alpha and Omega #4
Patricia Briggs
Urban Fantasy
336 pages
Ace
Available March 3rd
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
For once, mated werewolves Charles and Anna are not traveling because of Charles’s role as his father’s enforcer. This time, their trip to Arizona is purely personal, as Charles plans to buy Anna a horse for her birthday. Or at least it starts out that way...

Charles and Anna soon discover that a dangerous Fae being is on the loose, replacing human children with simulacrums. The Fae’s cold war with humanity is about to heat up—and Charles and Anna are in the cross fire. 

MY THOUGHTS
Dead Heat continues the evolution of Anna and Charles as a couple and this supernatural world as a whole now that werewolves have been outed to the general public. The two of them, as always, are a delight together, his quiet intensity and unexpected sense of humor a beautiful match for the genuine warmth and light that shines from Anna as the shadows of her past slowly but steadily fade away. The way his very presence intimidates all those around him allows Anna to be the more social of the pair of them, her place as his mate as soothing and comforting to him as it is empowering for her, and there's nothing better for a reader than watching a beloved couple get stronger with every chapter of their story.

While the first couple installments were more a bit more relationship-focused, Anna's well-earned skittishness and the nightmares of her past things neither quickly nor easily overcome, Fair Game and Dead Heat both step up the supernatural mystery aspect of this series, dragging one terrifying case after another into the limelight. Though Anna and Charles's romance is the kind that would have us doing anything in our power to find our way into this world so that we might find a werewolf mate of our very own, Ms. Briggs masterfully portrays the dark with the light, showing us unflinchingly what a real monster looks like. The wait in between installments in this series is almost always painfully long, but we know without a doubt Anna and Charles (and Mercy and Adam!) will never disappoint, leaving us utterly satisfied just as they have every time before.

Rating: 4/5
 

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.