*Guest book review contributed by Elaine Willis*

 

Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs

Elaine’s rating: 4 of 5 stars

Title: Dead Heat
Author: Patricia Briggs
Series: Alpha & Omega, #4
Pages: 336
Publisher: Ace
Date: March 3, 2015

 

Summary:

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.

 

Review:

Wonderful, just wonderful. I love the Mercy Thompson books and these are a spinoff of that series. I love that Mercy is such a kickass heroine and she gives her mate Adam a fit.

And I love Anna.

Anna is nothing like Mercy. Anna is a rare type of wolf shifter known as an Omega. Charles is not the Alpha of the pack, but he is an Alpha, and he is his father’s enforcer. His life has been violent, and he is feared by almost everyone. Everyone but Anna.

As an Omega, Anna is not influenced by the orders of an Alpha. She is outside the hierarchy of the pack. None of that matters though because Charles and Anna are so much in love. Like any couple, they have their difficult moments, but you can always tell the love is there.

In Dead Heat, Charles and Anna are finally getting to spend some time together that does not involve Pack business. They are visiting an old friend of Charles’s and looking for a horse for Anna.

Guess how well that goes.

Enter an evil Fae who is attacking children, Pack children, and it definitely becomes Pack business.

I really enjoyed this story. We got to see Charles and Anna together without all the drama of relationship problems. Even though they are very much together, the focus is on saving the children, not on them.

An important subplot is Charles’s interactions with his old friend and his family. And that is the only place I had problems with the book. Because of the number of generations involved and the fact that one of the men is a shifter, I stayed confused on who was who. Charles’s friend is an old man who is dying. His father (the shifter) appears to be in his twenties, and his son is maybe in his forties. I understand the relationships, but I kept mixing them up.

The Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega series are two of my favorites. You can read this one as a standalone, but it will be much better if read in sequence. And they’re great books, so why wouldn’t you want to do so?

This book was sent to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.

 

 

 

This guest post was contributed by Elaine Willis. Elaine is an avid reader and enjoys reviewing books. Check out more of her book reviews and articles on her blog.