Title: Hunter’s Claim (A Pack of His Own: Book One)
Author: Emily Carrington
Publisher: Loose Id
Pages/Word Count: 247
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Blurb: Luis Delgado, psychic vampire, is in lust with a half werewolf who thinks Luis is a monster. Luis can deal with lust. That’s one of the fun parts of being a psychic vampire. What he can’t handle is falling in love with the half wolf who wants nothing to do with him.
Almost nothing. Charlie craves Luis’s touch. He cajoles and teases Luis into intimate situations because he can’t resist the sex. Three things stop him from a deeper relationship: Luis eats emotions, draining defenseless humans; Charlie has become unexpected alpha of an eros pack, whom he must protect at all costs; and the TruWolves terrorist group wants to destroy everyone who supports peace between the straight and LGBT wolves.
Charlie’s desperate to guard Luis, his pack, and what seems like half the free world. How can there be time for honest and eternal love?
Review: Emily Carrington’s Hunter’s Claim follows Luis Delgado, a psychic vampire, and Charlie McLaughlin, a half-werewolf/half-human. While the two have worked together in the past, we meet them as part of a summit meeting between straight and LGBT werewolves. As part of the team charged with providing security, they are torn between the simmering attraction and the need to focus on their job.
Luis and Charlie seem to have the cards stacked against them. Of different races, a pairing between them is not only frowned upon but is physically challenging. Psychic vampires feed off of the emotions of their pray, and LGBT werewolves have psychic abilities. Needless to say, neither can stay out of the other’s head…which creates some extra tension.
Add to the mix that Charlie is the son of the head alpha, kind of like the president of the werewolf alpha association. His half-blood heritage and sexual orientation make him an outcast, someone all the other wolves watch with a mixture of mistrust and disgust.
This story had its ups and downs for me. As a lover of angst, Ms. Carrington satisfied my needs. Both characters struggled with their personal demons as they navigated the political demands of their jobs, as well as the emotional challenges of their mutual attraction. The sex between the two was more than physical. Clearly in lust, with undertones of love, their couplings were filled with passion and sensuality. The fact they can each get inside the other’s head made their sexual encounters even more visceral and hot.
The plotline kind of dragged for me, though. Had I gotten the sense that the story was about the evolution of the two main characters and their journey together, this would not have been an issue for me. However, the underlying summit and the dangers presented to both sides of delegates played an important part of the story. The storyline wasn’t as fleshed out as I would have liked it to be, serving more as a backdrop to the romance between the two protagonists. Had the author more fully developed the warring factions, explained the history, and tied the attacks against both sides to the individual characters a bit more, the action would have felt more immediate and compelling to me.
Additionally, the development of the love between the two main characters moved at a slow pace as well. There was certainly heat, but both resisted claiming the other as a Mate (for Charlie) or Love Dancer (for Luis). As I progressed through the book I found myself wondering, “When will they finally admit how they feel to each other?” Had the author claimed the love sooner, the climactic ending scenes would have held more emotional punch for me. I love it when two characters finally admit their attraction, only to have their newfound happiness challenged.
Overall, this was a pleasant read with interesting world-building and character development. I’m interested to see where this series goes now that our two main characters have claimed each other.
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