Born To Be Wild [Mass Market Paperback]

This book was okay but I didn't enjoy it as much as others in the series, all of which I've read. Josie is a vet in a shifter community but she doesn't treat shifters. Eli is the local sheriff and is a African Lion shifter. There was a bit right at the front where he tells her about waking up in odd places and that he once woke up in a kennel with a bunch of sled dogs. How did that happen? Did someone think that the african lion was a husky and he woke up human wondering where he was? I think maybe he must have been written as a wolf at first and this scene was missed in the edit. Speaking of editing I don't normally mention things like that and typos but this book was rife with them. I have seldom seen so many typos (wrong words the spellcheck missed) in a professionally edited and published work. I found at least 7 of them and I only started counting in the last half of the book.

I didn't really feel that there was much attraction between the hero and heroine. He had never noticed her in 3 years of being sheriff in a town that was described as small enough to walk end to end and they both frequented the only pastry shop daily yet they had never spoken before. Doesn't seem likely. Then when they do meet over a wounded shifter, he is basically immediately in love with her. There is very little discussion of her feelings for him but suddenly she is "in Love." I felt very little heat between the two much less any gentler feelings than pure physical.

The thing I found most disappointing about the novel though was that there was basically no reason for him to be a shifter. There is no discussion of shifter life style and pack dynamics. There are no actions that follow from a human falling in love with a shifter even if they are not a surprise to her.

Possible SPOILERS: He only changes to a lion twice and both times extremely briefly. He tracks using his senses while in human form. I know part of the plot dictated this but not until the end. Face it, one of the reasons we read shifter books is to see them shift and be the lion or whatever. He doesn't protect her in this form other than a brief fight and she doesn't pet him or admire him etc. All of these are things I like in shifter stories.

At the end there is a scene where she talks the shifter guys into going with them to catch the bad guys. Her reasoning was not sound and she shouldn't have been there so that sort of spoiled the end for me. Not to mention that the descriptions of the forest hideout of the bad guys dragged on and on and I skipped most of it. The end was a bit too facile and we never find out what happens to one of the major characters.

So if you're following the series go ahead and read it. It's not horrible but not near as entertaining as the earlier books in the series.

For the most part I enjoy the Others books, and this one was decent, although definitely not my favorite of the series. (Spoiler Check) While I liked the general idea of the plot, the bio-terrorism idea has these huge implications that are only skimmed over, and at the end, the drama just deflates. Oh, he's dead now, problem solved? No need to worry about the crazy virus he already infected people with? If these books revolved around the same main characters from book to book instead of shifting between couples, I might be inclined to think the problem would continue to be addressed in the next installment. As it is though, I doubt it. In all fairness though, these books are romance novels, not science fiction thrillers.

I must say though, as a frequent reader and someone who had 6 years of honors English classes, it's really hard to enjoy a professionally published book that is absolutely LITTERED with typos. There were more sentences throughout the book than I can count that made no sense unless you took out, added, or replaced a word that was in it. There were a few misspellings, but those are easier to ignore than a sentence that doesn't flow. I make no claims at being a perfect sentence-structurer (yes, I know that's not a word) or speller, but that's not my job. Whoever edited this book failed entirely. I feel like I purchased a draft copy instead of the final, ready-for-sale product.

I like Christine Warren, she's not in my top ten favorites but I will read her newest Other book. I could have passed on this one.

The plot description sounded intriguing but what flattened it for me was ***SPOILER ALERT*** the fact that none of the bad guys were introduced until the very end of the book. How much better would it have been to have had one of Josie's or Eli's friends or coworkers using the virus on his/her firends and neighbors?

I know this is mainly a paranormal romance but it could have used a little extra something cause the romance between Josie and Eli was, for me, tepid at best. We are asked to believe that in a very small town the sheriff and the vet have never met in three years, well maybe but it wasn't like that when I lived in a small town. Once they meet it is supposed to be instant True Love and Passion but instead felt tepid and forced like Warren only had so many pages to make this happen and so she used a hammer to force the romance into the plot.

Then there are parts of the plot that should be important enough to mention to each other that they just happen to forget.*** Possible Spoilers*** Josie forgets to tell Eli and the Alpha about the sick Lupine's elevated white cell count and Eli forgets to tell Josie he found an empty vial at the scene of an attack. C'mon, you have dead and dying Lupines and you can't remember the important details?

So they find the bad guys and a fight scene ensues and that's it. Huh? The end felt like Warren suddenly remembered she had something boiling over on the stove or had to go out of town and needed to finish the book immediately. So she did, no summation or accounting, just HEA over a dead body. Yeah, that works.

The typos and grammatical errors seem to be rife in books nowadays and it is both irritating and disruptive.

Would I buy another book by Warren? Yes, she has entertained me often enough and not every book can be a hit with every reader. If you are a fan of Warren's you will want this book but it probably won't be a favorite and if you are not a fan or are just starting to read her books bypass this one, she's written better.

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