The Mane Event- Shelly Laurenston (book 1)

CHRISTMAS PRIDE
How come all the good-looking ones are insane? That's what runs through NYPD cop Desiree "Dez" MacDermot's mind the minute she hooks up again with her childhood buddy, Mace Llewellyn. It isn't just the way he stares at her with those too-sexy gold eyes-as if he could devour her on the spot. Or the six-four, built-like-a-Navy Seal bod-o-death. It isn't even that he sniffs her neck and purrs, making her entire body tingle. It's more about that disconcerting, shifting-from-man-to-lion thing that unhinges her…and makes her want more. Mace likes making Dez crazy. In fact, he likes her any way he can get her-in bed, on the desk, here, now, again. Together, they'd always been trouble, but Dez has no idea just how good trouble can feel…
My thoughts: I enjoyed this first book, loved Mace and loved how once he set his mind to getting Dez back into his life he did anything and everything to make it happen. The side characters just cracked me up, especially Smitty, Mace’s best friend who is a wolf. Oh yeah forgot to mention, this series is about shape-shifters and there are many different kinds in this book. I like how the author describes the Pride and how she puts it out there that the women run the Pride. Mace’s sister is queen bitch and she makes sure everyone knows it. She wants to trade Mace to another Pride in exchange for a few breeding males for her Pride, well wouldn’t know it, he wants nothing to do with that. Dez and Mace were best friends when they were younger until she moved and he thought she left without telling him goodbye but his sister had a lot to do with that. Now years later he is out of the Seals and has come home to NY to start a new business with his wolf friend and find this girl/woman who has never left his heart. Dez is a NYC cop and loves her job, she doesn’t think she has time for a relationship and defiantly doesn’t think Mace would ever want her. I have to admit this book made me laugh out loud often and I love that in a book.
My Rating: 4.5

SHAW'S TAIL
Brendon Shaw, hotel owner and lion shifter, has seen better days. He's been beaten, had a gun to the back of his head, and had to be rescued by a Pack of shape-shifting wolves. He didn't think he'd survive the night, much less find the woman of his dreams. And he never thought the woman of his dreams would have a Tennessee accent and wear cowboy boots. Once he sets his sights on her, the predator in him is ready to pounce and never let go. Ronnie Lee Reed is ready to change her life, and New York City is the place where any girl-even one who runs with a Pack-can redefine herself. First order of business: find a mate, settle down, and stop using men for sex. Even big, gorgeous, lion-shifting, oh-my-what-big-um-paws-you-have men. Then again…
My thoughts: So I liked this second half of the book better, I literally had tears rolling down my face from laughing at one part of this book. Ronnie is a She-wolf who we met in Mace’s book. She is best friends with Sissie Mae, who is Smitty’s baby sister. This book picks up where the first half left off with Brendon getting attacked by other lions, so while he is saved he is still hurt so Ronnie is picked to sit with him in the hospital watching over him. The shape-shifters go through a horrible fever while they are healing and do and say crazy things in a fever induced haze. When Brendon is attacked at the hospital Ronnie takes him to her Aunt’s house to hide and recover and this is where it gets funny. Let me tell you a full grown shifter lion dancing in the snow is perfectly hilarious how this author writes it. So of course Brendon knows that Ronnie is his mate but Ronnie is more of a love’em and leave’em type of She-wolf, she is ok with the wild, hot sex but has no problem leaving him in the morning or so she thinks. When her older (very protective) brothers come to town to visit the Pack and to check out NY they don’t take kindly to a Lion sexing up their baby sister. The brothers get Brendon & Mitch (Brendon’s brother) drunk on moonshine but the Pack passes out first and this my friends is when I laughed so hard I was crying. The love and shock of actually being in love from both Brendon and Ronnie make this a good read. Plenty of sex in these two stories and good sex too, not the hit & miss that makes you guess what the characters are doing.
My Rating: 4.5