Main Characters:
Roarke Wallace – Werewolf from the Wallace pack who is also a college professor of cryptozoology sent to debunk an old man’s claim that he’s seen bigfoot so as to protect the pack that the Grandpa Earl lives next too.
Abby Winchell – Grandpa Earl’s granddaughter who comes to the rescue when Earl claims to have seen Bigfoot. She’s determined to make sure her grandfather isn’t humiliated.
Donald – a Bigfoot enthusiast who Abby and Roarke run into while searching for Bigfoot. He’s not the most truthful guy around…
Cameron Gentry – Alpha of the Gentry pack – who live right next to Grandpa Earl. He hires Roarke to discredit Earl so that the bigfoot fans leave and so that the Gentry pack can buy Earl’s land. He’s not the nicest guy.
Main Premise: Cameron Gentry is out to oust Earl Dooley from his land so that he can have it for his pack and so that his pack stays safe. Roarke is a fellow were and is hired to discredit Earl. But, he really wants to try to relocate the Sasquatch pair that Dooley did in fact see. He is attracted to Abby. She convinces Roarke to let her tag along into the woods to search for the pair. She discovers that he is a were, and she promises to keep his secret. He battles the notion of mating with a human since his older brother Aidan did and he thinks he should help propagate his species by mating with another were. But this ideal is hard to come to terms with when he is so attracted to Abby. He and Abby fall in love – but not before Cameron decides to take matters into his own hands.
Locations: West coast of Oregon
Other Important Things to Remember for Later: Of course Abby and Roarke get together. We meet Knox Trevelyan, a helicopter pilot from a Seattle pack. He’s not happy about the human involvement in the situation but he helps Roarke resettle the Sasquatch pair. I would think that the next book will be about him, but the preview of a Werewolf in Seattle at the end leads me to think that he will only be a collateral character (and that Colin will be the male protagonist in the next installment, but we will see…).
Review: Another fun little book. The mystery genre has a sub-genre called “cozy” mysteries – and I think that the PNR genre needs a good name for this type of series. This isn’t the serial big bad evil that a band of “brothers” is battling (like the BDB or the Midnight Breed or the like). Instead, we are introduced to a string of related characters or friends of characters and we see a community through the eyes of each fun little romance. Roarke and Abby are just as like-able as any characters in this category. Cameron is more unlikeable then the conflict mechanism seen in most of the contemporaries I have read lately. And, I loved how it all came together to keep Earl happy and yet keep this little world intact. I will say that a neat little twist is that we are moving all over the US in this series, so that’s a way to keep them interesting and fresh – while I love the Strange Neighbors we don’t see much other than the same apartment building there. At least here there is the opportunity to change setting very easily and I like that!
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