Review: Covert Ops: Shifting Pleasures – Alla Kar

Lilly Palmer is an agent working for the FBI. Not just any division either but the SSB. The Shape Shifter’s Bureau. When Lilly’s best friend Kole drags her out to a night club, she finds herself drawn to Bo Parker, a jarhead. Lilly despises Marine’s because she has had her fair share of them as partners and they are trigger happy, horny assholes that she can’t stand to be around. Regardless, she breaks her rule of one night stands and goes home with Bo, for a night to remember. When Lilly gets to her meeting the next morning she finds out that her new partner isn’t so new after all, Bo Parker, her one night stand, is standing there with a shit eating grin on his face. If it isn’t awkward enough, they are assigned a mission in South Africa when the U.S Vice President is kidnapped and have to go together. Their relationship heats up and they both want it, but Lilly seems to be the only one that wants to obey by the rules. No sexual relationships between partners. In South Africa, Bo and Lilly fight the urge to take one another and fight the bastards that want Lilly for a science experiment. Her ex partner, Patrick, has his hand deep in the Vice President’s kidnapping and wants her for her blood, to create shape shifters. Bo and Lilly will fight for each other in more ways than one, will they win the battle?

Series:
Release Date: May 2013
Publisher: Red Sage Press
Source: Provided by Publisher
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Reviewer’s Thoughts

Alla Kar spins a tale of how a one night stand between an FBI panther-shifter, Lilly and a Marine, Bo turns into a passionate love affair. Lilly is a member of the SSB (shape shifter bureau) which is one of the least known departments of the FBI. She has been paired with several different partners and each partner has been unable to deal with her panther-shifting ability. Lilly has been shot, harassed, and even raped. As a result she is physically tired and emotionally empty.

Her best friend Kole suggests that Lily is in need of a good lay to help her overcome her less than desirable circumstances. Lilly agrees to go to the club and meets Bo while standing in line. She is rude, but Bo is not put off and while dancing Lilly decides to take Kole’s advice. Since this is a novella not a full length book I think the author had to dive right into the characters without much character development, but I would have loved to see more depth to both Lilly and Bo’s characters. The reader is barely introduced to them before they go off to have a night of steamy sex.

After their night of steamy sex an unexpected complication occurs when they find out they are partners on an assignment the next day. From this point on the storyline continues to be very predictable with Lilly and Bo trying to stay away from each other. They give in and have sex and a real bond forms. There were a couple of twists such as Jarred a wolf-shifter that likes Lilly and whether he would be a problem for Lilly and Bo or help them. Bo’s character was really sweet when he found out that Lilly could shift into a panther, and he showed her how accepting he was by taking her straight to bed.

Lilly and Bo arrive at the site of their assignment, Lilly is kidnapped the next day, and rescued the day after. All of the small amount of action and suspense happen in a 24 hour period. It was a little bit of a let down because the author didn’t really delve into the storyline concerning her abduction enough. The girl attending to Lilly was nice, smiled, and had no clue that Lilly could be harmed, and then the madman responsible for her being their walks in and it appears he is in a relationship with this girl. That was the perfect point to have Lilly begin to work on the girl to turn her against the madman and add some drama to the storyline. It never happened. Even during the fight the author writes that Lilly realizes the only way to defeat one of the men is by tearing them limb from limb. Lilly breaks the man’s leg and the fight is over. What???

This book wasn’t great, but it did make for a fast paced very steamy read. Keeping in mind that it was a novella I did find the characters to be likable, but the plot missed several opportunities to make it a good book. Even though it was short I think the author hurt the storyline by having too few details and a lack of character development. It was just okay for me.