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Normally prologues suck, but this book starts with a good one: Maris’s horrible husband dumps her while texting his girlfriend, in between putting her down and informing her that he’s taking all their expensive and necessary ranch equipment to use on his girlfriend’s ranch. Oh yeah, and he was cheating on her all along. Bye!
One year later, Maris is struggling to keep her ranch going. Wolves have been slaughtering her cattle, and she’s forced to give up on her dreams and put her beloved herd up for auction. Enter surly, sexy cowboy Bryson, who buys it and then drives the lot of them right back to her ranch. Maris, unwilling to be pitied or take charity, stuffs a calf into the front of her truck and drives it right back to the ranch where Bryson works as a hired hand!
This has a distinctly realistic/gritty tone (typical for Joyce). The hero has cow shit on his boots, cows go to the slaughterhouse, and werewolves piss all over the heroine's property. (The hero says this is like texting for them!)
The hero is a bit macho/controlling and initially comes across as a dick to the heroine, who slaps him. But his heart is clearly in the right place, and he backs off the assholery very quickly. He's having trouble controlling his grizzly bear, and unlike some of Joyce's books where "oh no, I'm losing control!" is said but not shown, here he actually rampages and slaughters cattle at the ranch he's working at. (This shows how much the werewolf brothers who own the ranch value him, as we've seen how valuable cattle are.) He has a REALLY tragic backstory.
He got turned, and then consensually tried to turn his girlfriend, not knowing that men almost always survive the change and women almost always don't. She died.
I've come across variants of this idea in shifter books before, where women don't survive becoming shifters, shifters are never female, shifter women are very rare, etc, and it's a trope I really dislike. It typically means either people are constantly trying to kidnap or rape the heroine, and/or she's the only woman in the book. In this book, it's not quite either and I liked the drama and danger over Maris's turning, but it's still a very male-dominated book.
Maris, the heroine, is a typically likable, realistic, down to earth Joyce heroine with the exception of one truly bizarre bit, which is that she grabs her tits when startled. I... really don't get this.
It's a well-done, satisfying book. I especially liked the interactions with the werewolf brothers, who help Maris take sweet revenge on her evil ex-husband and save her life after she gets bitten. Joyce is great at rough-around-the-edges found family.
However, warning that I read the second book in the series, which I'll review tomorrow, and pretty much hated it. So if you haven't read Joyce before, don't start here. Start with Saw Bears or Grey Back Bears.
Steal Her Heart (Kaid Ranch Shifters Book 1)
One year later, Maris is struggling to keep her ranch going. Wolves have been slaughtering her cattle, and she’s forced to give up on her dreams and put her beloved herd up for auction. Enter surly, sexy cowboy Bryson, who buys it and then drives the lot of them right back to her ranch. Maris, unwilling to be pitied or take charity, stuffs a calf into the front of her truck and drives it right back to the ranch where Bryson works as a hired hand!
This has a distinctly realistic/gritty tone (typical for Joyce). The hero has cow shit on his boots, cows go to the slaughterhouse, and werewolves piss all over the heroine's property. (The hero says this is like texting for them!)
The hero is a bit macho/controlling and initially comes across as a dick to the heroine, who slaps him. But his heart is clearly in the right place, and he backs off the assholery very quickly. He's having trouble controlling his grizzly bear, and unlike some of Joyce's books where "oh no, I'm losing control!" is said but not shown, here he actually rampages and slaughters cattle at the ranch he's working at. (This shows how much the werewolf brothers who own the ranch value him, as we've seen how valuable cattle are.) He has a REALLY tragic backstory.
He got turned, and then consensually tried to turn his girlfriend, not knowing that men almost always survive the change and women almost always don't. She died.
I've come across variants of this idea in shifter books before, where women don't survive becoming shifters, shifters are never female, shifter women are very rare, etc, and it's a trope I really dislike. It typically means either people are constantly trying to kidnap or rape the heroine, and/or she's the only woman in the book. In this book, it's not quite either and I liked the drama and danger over Maris's turning, but it's still a very male-dominated book.
Maris, the heroine, is a typically likable, realistic, down to earth Joyce heroine with the exception of one truly bizarre bit, which is that she grabs her tits when startled. I... really don't get this.
It's a well-done, satisfying book. I especially liked the interactions with the werewolf brothers, who help Maris take sweet revenge on her evil ex-husband and save her life after she gets bitten. Joyce is great at rough-around-the-edges found family.
However, warning that I read the second book in the series, which I'll review tomorrow, and pretty much hated it. So if you haven't read Joyce before, don't start here. Start with Saw Bears or Grey Back Bears.
Steal Her Heart (Kaid Ranch Shifters Book 1)
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I had forgotten how common this is in the worldbuilding of especially older-school shifter books. SF romance is very much That Way, too - alien species who are only male and therefore have to kidnap human women are super duper common. It's a sort of interesting inverse of the way that heroines in some of the other subgenres (reverse harem, say, or vampire) are super-duper-special - in this case, they're still ordinary human women who are made super-special just because women are incredibly rare. I assume it's a similar kind of fantasy, except that the fantasy is not "I could gain lots of powers and be special!", it's "I'm special just the way I am, and I could step into this world as my ordinary self and be valued and rare."
(But I agree with you that it's not a worldbuilding feature I enjoy.)