Guest Review: Silver Mine – Vivian Arend

If a tree falls in the forest, duck…

Takhini Wolves, Book 2

Life in isolation is the safest place for Chase Johnson, a crossbreed who doesn’t know which form he’ll assume next—cougar or wolf. Once a year, his unelected position as spokesman for the Yukon outcasts forces him to visit civilization. This time he runs across someone unexpected. She’s not his mate, but she pushes all the right buttons.

It’s taken years for Shelley Bradley to gather the courage to return to her home pack. In spite of being the lowest of the low—a shifter who can’t shift—she’s determined to make a place for herself as the Whitehorse locals’ new vet-slash-doctor.

There’s definite electricity between her and Chase, but sex with fellow shifters and the inherent mind games got old a long time ago. Ignoring him seems best. When he shows up at her office with a wound that won’t heal, she’s stuck—yet drawn to solve this medical mystery.

As they journey deep into outcast territory in search of answers, their powerful sexual attraction crumbles her resistance. But time is of the essence. If a cure can’t be found before his human and cougar succumb to his injury, he—and others like him—will die.

Warning: Contains a silver-tongued, hairy-chested, lean-muscled Alpha who’s got what it takes to lead in the wilderness and in the bedroom. Yeah, I know…not really much of a deterrent, is it? Throw in continuing territorial wars and a domestic cat. Stir and enjoy the chaos

Series:  Takhini Wolves #2
Release Date:  September 11, 2012
Publisher:  Samhain Publishing
Source:  Novel Sidekick
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Reviewer’s Thoughts:

The second installment to the Takhini Pack series, Silver Mine gives us the story of Chase, a crossbreed shifter, and Shelley, a shifter who can’t shift. This is an interesting story of two outcasts who can’t seem to keep their hands off each

What I liked about this story the best was the characters. There’s just something about Chase, I wasn’t sure what it was at first, I just knew that there was something about this character that set him apart from your average hero. Chase turns out to be a contradiction in terms. He’s an outcast living off in the woods in virtual solitude, yet he’s the alpha of dozens of other outcasts of every imaginable shifter breed. He’s even got a wolverine in his pack! On the other hand, we have Shelley, the “mutant” wolf shifter whose human half sister fits in with the shifter pack better than she does. How a pack would accept a human but reject a shifter, I have yet to understand. What I do understand is that Shelley seems to have a masochistic side. The pack treats her badly, she refuses to return to the pack, yet she just has to go back to her hometown and serve as their doctor/vet. It almost sounds like your typical abusive relationship. I just couldn’t understand why she would put herself in that position, which made it hard to really get her character.

What I didn’t like about this story… Arend makes it a point to say, more than once, that Chase and Shelley are not mates. So if they’re not mates, then where is this relationship headed? A one-night stand? A hot affair that will continue until one or the other does find their true mate and dumps the other? To tell you the truth, I finished the book and I still don’t know. Although I greatly enjoyed the story, the love scenes were pretty hot, the action everywhere, the alpha attitude plentiful, yet it still felt incomplete. I don’t feel it measured up to Arend’s usual work. Maybe that makes me biased. So I’m basing my rating on my enjoyment of this particular piece of work as I read it. Would it have made a difference if I had read book 1 first? Maybe. So to be honest, I will give this series a second chance and read book 1 before deciding if I will continue to follow it or not. You be the judge. You disagree? Feel free to tell me.

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