Author: Summer Devon
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Pages/Word Count: 250 Pages
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Blurb: Desire that runs deeper than blood.
Colt Easton is easygoing, fun loving, good with little kids and he occasionally turns into a beast capable of ripping out a man’s throat. It’s a family secret he’d be more than happy to keep if there wasn’t a little boy’s life at stake.
A deathbed confession revealed the child could carry Easton blood. The only way Colt can monitor the boy is with a job at his day-care center. The problem? New laws decree that all shifters be tagged. No blood test, no job.
Dr. Jasper Glen is instantly drawn to the outgoing Colt and is certain any child would be safe in the handsome shifter’s care. He ought to know; he’s been studying shifters for years, even invented the blood test that now, to his shame, the government is using against them.
All it takes is a quick vial switch. Except Jasper’s good deed blows the lid off a secret he didn’t even know he was keeping. And triggers a chain of events that makes them all moving targets.
Warning: Contains hot shifter seduction, government goons, and a mad scientist.
Review: Revealing the Beast is a shifter story with a little bit of a twist. After reading the blurb I was excited to get my hands on it, the premise sounded interesting, but what I found when I’d finished was a mildly passable story. With a little bit of tweaking, I feel this could have been a much better story. As it was, it didn’t work for me.
This story didn’t have your usual shifters, but was a composite of a few thrown together to make something new. The story centers on Colt Easten, who’s a varetese shifter, which is one of the most dangerous kinds. He is ex-military but after leaving the service, he is working as a teacher in a day care center. Shifters have been exposed and live open with humans, but the government has started a registry and tests people’s DNA to weed out the shifters. When anyone applies for a job or tries to rent an apartment, they are tested to see if they are a shifter or not. It’s a bit Big Brother Is Watching You concept, and I kind of liked this idea for a story because it could totally happen. Shifters are panicking that they will be segregated, and humans are afraid that shifters will go crazy and attack. These ideas are not bad, but the way it was carried out wasn’t so great.
Colt needs to get this job at a day care center to protect his nephew, and that’s how he meets Dr. Jasper Glen. Jasper is a veterinarian who’s currently working in a government lab, drawing blood and testing people. Jasper is fascinated with all things shifter. He sees himself as doing important research on shifter physiology to help shifters and society, so he jumps at the chance to question Colt and even see him shift.
The plot is interesting, what with the various shifters, people with shifter DNA, shifter segregation, Colts family and this budding attraction between him and Jasper, but the actual writing and structure leave a lot to be desired. I found the pace to be slow and grew bored quickly. The combo of a hot shifter and a do-good doctor should have been a slam dunk, but it wasn’t. The relationship between Colt and Jasper was a bit strange. Jasper was this buttoned up researcher with zero interest in Colt, other than him being a shifter, and Colt was totally crazy about Jasper. I think it was just the way they were written. The dialogue and action didn’t support any sort of connection between them. They just did not gel for me, which was disappointing because I really wanted to love them. I love shifter books but this one didn’t do anything for me.
Revealing the Beast is an interesting concept but the execution didn’t hit the mark.
You can buy Revealing the Beast here:
