ORDER A COPY: Werewolf in Alaska: A Wild About You Novel
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Publishing Date: July 2, 2013
Paperback: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars
In Polecat, Alaska, Rachel Miller and Jake Hunter have a mutual admiration for each other—from across a lake. There’s nothing Rachel likes more than spying on the very fit wilderness guide when he skinny-dips each night. And Jake has always been curious about his reclusive artist neighbor. He even bought Rachel’s first wood carving: a wolf who looks suspiciously like him…
Jake is a werewolf, but not just any werewolf. He’s the founder of WARM (Werewolves Against Random Mating). And that means a human like Rachel is off-limits, no matter how attractive he finds her.
But when Rachel is threatened by a bear, and Jake shifts to save her, their lives collide with an intense passion, one that could change everything they’ve ever felt about themselves—and each other.
We first meet the gorgeous werewolf, Jake Hunter, in Werewolf in Denver. Jake was supporting Kate Stillman’s movement to keep werewolves mating with werewolves. Jake was disappointed when Kate fell in love with and mated with werewolf Duncan MacDowell, her opponent in that movement who wanted open werewolf/human dating. Jake believed that Kate no longer held a steadfast belief in the cause so Jake returned to his home in Alaska to begin his own movement, Werewolves Against Random Mating (WARM).
Jake has been very successful in promoting his movement throughout the Were community. The only thing that stands in Jake’s way is his absolute fixation on the human artist across the lake. Jake purchased Rachel’s first wood carving, a wolf that looks too much like his father to be a coincidence. Rachel is now an international success but she still resides in her tiny cabin in Polecat, Alaska, where she can enjoy her peace in the surrounding woods.
Just because Jake has made it a habit to run each night around the lake so he can check on Rachel and get a sniff of her scent while she is working in her wood shop, doesn’t mean he believes any less in the WARM cause. But his life certainly would be better if only Rachel had been born a werewolf. Then he could indulge in all the fantasies that keep him up some nights.
When Rachel walks out of her shop right between a bear cub and his mama, Jake runs over to protect her and is injured fighting off the bear. Rachel is determined to nurse her hero wolf back to health and now Jake finds himself locked in Rachel’s bedroom, just not in the form he hoped to be in when he finally made it into her bed.
If Jake shifts to his human form, he can quicken his healing, but he risks letting Rachel find out about Weres. If he stays as a wolf, Rachel will be none the wiser but he risks infection and scarring. Jake has to make a decision soon, but if Rachel knows about Weres will Jake be able to hold fast to his belief that Weres and humans cannot be together.
THOUGHTS:
I have enjoyed the two books that I have read so far in this series. Very lighthearted stories which mix in the paranormal.
Jake was a great character from the prior book so we were already familiar with him when we started the book. Rachel has a few ditsy moments like when she gets it into her head that Her Wolf belongs to Jake and that Jake isn’t taking good care of him and she has to break into Jake’s cabin to get the wolf back. Even if the wolf was his (instead of being him) there was nothing to make her believe that the wolf was being abused. Rachel jumps to conclusions based on her imagination alone which makes it hard to determine how she’ll react to anything.
All-in-all, this was a cute, uncomplicated story with enjoyable characters.
Received an ARC from netgalley.com, courtesy of the publisher. Thank you.
Favorite Scene:
“I should really shave off some of this fur,” she murmured, partly to him but mostly to herself.
He raised his head and glared at her. No way was he submitting to that.
“You keep acting as if you understand every word I’m saying,” She met his glare with a soft smile. “You don’t of course, but it’s uncanny how you seem to.”
He’d have to watch his reaction so she wouldn’t edge any closer to the truth. But he wouldn’t let her take a razor to his coat, and that was final. One shift to human form and another back to wolf form, and he’d be on the road to recovery. If she started hacking up his coat while he was in wolf form, it wouldn’t grow out for weeks.
“I’m sure you don’t want me to shave you, but it would make dressing your wounds about five hundred percent easier. I’m going to try it and see what happens.”
The hell she was. After she walked away, he staggered to his feet and headed unsteadily toward the bedroom door. He’d leap through the glass window if he had to. His fur had never been shaved, and he wasn’t about to let her do it now.
“Hey.” She blocked his path, scissors in one hand and a girlie-looking pink razor in the other. “Where do you think you’re going?”
With one glance at the razor, he shouldered his way past her. Bad enough that she planned to shave him, but with a pink razor? Hell, no. Adrenaline gave him strength, and he nearly knocked her down. As he’d suspected, both the front door and the back one leading out to the deck were closed tight.
So were the windows. The bear had scared her into battening down the hatches. He didn’t blame her, and he’d hate to repay her kindness by breaking through her window.
Truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he could work up enough momentum to do that. The windows on the lake side of the cabin looked fairly new, which could mean they were double paned. Besides, if he succeeded in breaking through, he’d leave her vulnerable if the bear returned.
He’d told the mother grizzly to keep away, but her cub was young and unruly. He could scamper back. Curiosity might cause him to climb through a shattered window, and his mother would be obliged to follow. Jake cursed a bad situation that left him no good options.
“What’s gotten into you?” Rachel approached him, still holding the scissors and pink razor. “You seemed so docile until I mentioned shaving your fur.” She frowned. “Surely that isn’t the reason?”
Growling, he backed away from her.
“I can’t believe it’s that.” She tucked both hands behind her back. “You can’t possibly know what I plan to do with these.”
Yes, I do, toots. He growled again, louder this time. He would never hurt her, but if she thought she could trick him into getting shaved, she had another think coming. He’d find a way to escape that fate, one way or another.
