Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you're prepared to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Tag Line: None. Another Kindle book.From the Back of the Book: Honey loves running her bar and grill, catering to humans and shifters alike. But there are two things that dim her love of the place: cocky assholes who think they own the world and cocky assholes who think they can flex their muscles and wreck her bar when throwing a temper tantrum. Unfortunately, the drop-dead gorgeous, hotter than hot, shifter man she secretly loves is both. Blake wants the curvaceous, gorgeous Honey in his bed. Now. He's lusted (but not loved, let's get that straight) after the luscious woman for months. True, he looks like a bad-boy biker mixed with a player and, yeah, he's broken a few things in her bar...But only because the guys were hitting on his girl. With no hope of winning her over in sight, he does what any red-blooded werehedgehog would do in his position. He lies.
This book was published in 2013 and it's book one of a larger series about Honey and her bar. Unfortunately it's not on Kindle Unlimited so this will be our only one. It's also very, very short. Not quite as short as the snake book but pretty close.
Before I start, I want to say that I find hedgehogs super adorable but also really, really terrifying.
I mean, look at that thing. It's clearly plotting to steal my soul. {{{Shiver}}}
We begin with Blake who is
described to us as a bad-boy dressed entirely in black leather with a
heavily muscled frame. He's surveying the scene in Honey's
bar and he's not amused at all. Honey is his. She might not know it
yet, but she's his and everyone else better get with the fucking
program fast. He saunters up to the bar and leans against it to
watch all the drunken idiots falling all over themselves to get to
his woman.
Honey is “Amozonian tall”
with honey colored hair, big boobs and a great ass. Blake greatly
admires these things about her. She gets his engine revving if you
know what I mean. If you ask him what he's attracted to most,
though, he'd say her turquoise eyes. He feels like she's the only
person who has ever really seen him and that enraptures and terrifies
him at the same time.
While he's standing there, some drunken
idiot gets a little fresh and asks Honey for a little something
“extra” (ahem) and Blake loses his ever-lovin' mind. He
squares off and all the locals begin clearing the area. They know
Blake. They know what's about to go down.
Blake takes a moment to let us know
he's a “were”. He's stronger and faster than any human.
He can lift cars and bend trees. Men want to be him and women want
to be with him. Same old story, same old song. #yawn Except one
thing. Blake's a shifter but he rarely shifts because the fates are
gigantic bitches. Blake is a werehedgehog.
It's okay to laugh. I did.
Blake tells the asshole to leave Honey
alone and the asshole laughs at him. He tells Blake to take a hike
before he and his friends decide to teach Blake a lesson. Blake
picks up a chair. Honey screams at him to put it down but he ignores
her. He rips the thing in two like it's a piece of paper leaving him
with a leg in each hand.
The fight is short. Asshole's friends
attack in a pack but they're human and no match for the shifter.
Soon they're all in a puddle at his feet. He takes one look at Honey
and knows he's in trouble. She's hella pissed, yo.
We head-hop into Honey's brain now.
She's not happy but also not surprised. Blake is constantly getting
into fights at her bar these days. She's so mad at him that she
throws a peanut at his head which he catches in his mouth and eats
whole, shell and all.
We're just going to bypass the whole eating a peanut shell like a psychopath thing. What kind of a weapon is a stupid
peanut? Now we all know you have it bad for this guy, sister. If you were
truly ticked you would have thrown a bottle. Or a knife. Or a
glass. Or about anything other than a stupid peanut. Blake calls
her “honey bear” which just pisses her off more. She asks
him if she looks like a “big fat bear” and tragically
insults poor Bernie the bear-shifter at the end of the bar.
Feeling completely frazzled by now,
Honey decides to close the bar a little early. Blake hangs around
while Honey and her employee Katie close things up and
she can't help but notice how nicely his tight leather pants show off
his...ahem....talents...if you know what I mean. She tells us she'd
desperately love to lick his tattoos.
His tattoos are on his arms. Get your
minds out of the gutter. We still have 10-20 pages before we get to
any of that. Maybe.
Honey is pretty hot to get into Blake's
pants but she doesn't want a relationship and she figures he's a
ride-or-die kind of guy. I know it seems like a role reversal (and COMPLETELY contradicts the lying book blurb) but
the guys in these books are often portrayed as long-term, in it 'til
death kind of guys. I don't know why exactly but it seems like once
they've picked their women that's it for them.
Blake walks her to her car and she
jumps in before he can try to kiss her. She doesn't live far from
the bar but it's a sketchy area and she always drives rather than
walks. She can hear her “babies” yipping from inside
before she even opens the door. Her babies turn out to be three
hedgehogs she's rescued from a local hedgehog rescue group. She takes the hedgies out and plays with them
while fantasizing about Blake and his...talents. She figures he
could never love her because she's “curvy” and a man as hot as him could have some supermodel type.
So she loves hedgehogs and he just happens to be one. Hmmmm......
Honey puts her babies away and goes to
take a shower and get ready for bed. It's been a long day. She
can't get her mind off Blake and his....talents....though and she
can't sleep. Finally she decides to take matters into her own hands,
if you know what I mean, and we get a four page description of her
having super fun times alone.
Now we're back in Blake's head. He's
upset that he can't seem to get Honey's attention no matter how hard
he tries. He figures she's probably into the boring accountant type
and not the leather-clad bar brawling type. He walks to his bike
which is enormous and that's when Blake gives us a peek into
his psyche. He's always trying to show people how powerful he is –
with the fights and the leather and the bike – because he shifts
into a powerless little hedgehog. He vows never to let Honey see him in his other
state.
And just like that, Blake goes from a super annoying, one-dimensional character to someone I actually understand and sympathize with. It's all very Freudian.
Katie rocks up as Blake is getting on
his bike. She's the only other werehedgehog in town and the beta in
the “pack” to Blake's alpha. She tells him he's wasting his time
on Honey and he needs to move on. He pretends not to hear her and rides off. He swings by Honey's place and plays a little
peeping-Tom. He sees her babies all curled up in their cage and
begins to have a little hope that maybe Honey could accept his other
self.
He makes his way around the house just
in time to catch the end of Honey's.....super fun times. He's stunned when
he hears her call his name out in blinding passion. Then we get a two page description
of what Blake would like to do to Honey with his....talents. He
rides home to have some super fun times with his own hand.
We're back in Honey's head now and back
in the bar on another night. Honey and Katie are discussing Honey
adopting another hedgie. I sincerely hope it won't be Blake in
disguise. Honey knows Katie is a hedgie but not Blake. Blake
arrives and hears her going on and on about how cute hedgies are and
he spits his beer all over the bar. Katie razzes him and he calls
her “bubble butt” and for some reason, Honey gets super
upset like he's insulted her instead. She seems to take it as an
indication that Blake doesn't like girls with junk in the trunk and
she's despondent.
She goes into the back room and Katie
follows. Honey babbles about Blake not liking big butts for awhile
which doesn't even make sense. I guess the point is that Katie is
super skinny and Honey is thinking that if Blake thinks Katie's ass
is huge, then Honey's must be gargantuan. Katie tries to cheer her
up by doing the Baby Got Back dance and ends up hip checking Honey
right into a bunch of condiments. Honey gets ketchup and mustard and
the condiment-which-must-not-be-named in her hair.
Blake walks in to check on them and
finds the disaster. Katie goes back out to take care of the bar
while Honey leans over the sink and tries to wash the stuff out of
her hair. Suddenly we're bouncing between Blake and Honey's head and
it's super disorienting. I hate it when authors do this. Blake is
checking out Honey's ass and trying to figure out how to get his
hands on it without getting stabbed while Honey is babbling about how
she loves Katie but she hates her skinny ass.
Wow, these people are really into
asses.
Get your minds out of the gutter.
(Although....Note from Future Me: these people are REALLY into asses.)
Blake picks up on her tone immediately. He
tells Honey that he thinks Katie is too skinny and guys prefer
curves. That really gets Honey hot and all of a
sudden.......hmmmm.....sometimes figuring out how to say this stuff is
hard....um difficult! I meant difficult! All of a sudden, our
wereshifterhedgie can smell Honey's....affection...for him. If you
know what I mean.
Blake gets some kind of brilliant idea
to shift into a hedgie and get Katie in hedgie form to attack him so
that he's injured and then Honey will find him and take care of him. Katie enjoys it a little too
much and really kicks his hedgie ass. I mean, he lets her, but
still.
Can I just say how relieved I am to find out that he shifts into a hedgie-sized hedgie and not a man-sized hedgie? Seriously, I was about to wet my pants at the thought.
Honey comes out and finds him and
that's when we learn he's not only a hedgehog, he's a pigmy
hedgehog. Tiny. She calls him a “little guy” and Blake
growls until she amends it to “big guy”. Then she
mentions him getting beat up by something and he growls again as if
his pride is wounded. She scoops him up and he burrows right into
her boobs. She gets into her car and drives him to the emergency vet.
Blake suddenly finds himself with a
thermometer up his ass and he's not happy at all. It takes four of
them to hold him down and Honey is pretty proud of her little
hedgie's fighting spirit. She still has no idea its Blake. After
Blake's all patched up, the vet offers Honey his card and asks her on
a date. He's cute but there's no spark. Still, she hasn't been on a
date in forever and she decides to give it a whirl. She picks Blake
up and takes him home.
What's he going to do when his ass is
trapped in a cage? I feel like this plan was not well thought out.
Blake spends his night in the cage with
the three other hedgehogs. We're in Honey's head so I have no idea
how he took that, but Honey tells us he's cowering in the corner
when she checks on him the next day. She's pretty excited about her
date with Dr Furry (I can't remember his name so I decided
he's gonna be Dr Furry) and decides to wear her red “fuck me”
dress. Yes, that's what she calls it. It's tight and short and cut
down to there. You know the kind.
Dr Furry shows up early and Honey asks
him to hold Blake while she gets dressed. She's calling Blake "Norman" by the way which just pisses Blake off. He thinks it's an undignified name. While they're hanging out
on the couch, Dr Furry gets a phone call and reveals himself to be a
dick pretty quickly. He tells whoever is on the other end that Honey is chubby so she'll be an easy
conquest and he's definitely getting some tonight. I hope Blake
bites him on the.....talents.
He doesn't. But he does pee on
him.
Sorry, but I love Blake. Like super
love him. That was awesome. And hilarious.
Honey comes out of the room just in
time to see Dr Furry angrily throw Blake/Norman across the room. Honey
screams at Dr Furry and Dr Furry says someone should kill the damn
hedgehog because he's feral. Honey kicks his ass out. She's worried
about Blake/Norman and decides to let him sleep in her bed. She falls
asleep pretty quickly and dreams about Blake kissing her. Just when
the dream gets interesting, dream Blake nips her lip and it hurts and
she knows she isn't dreaming.
Honey is pissed to find him in her bed.
He's confused. Apparently she was talking to him in her sleep and
he thought she was awake and he completely misread
the situation. She's frantic to find "Norman" and screams at him
to help her. For some reason she decides that Blake has killed and/or eaten Norman in order to make out with her. Ooooooooooookay.
Blake finally manages to get her to listen to him long enough to tell her that he IS Norman. This just pisses her
off more and she orders him out of her apartment. Blake leaves,
upset. He'd thought she was awake. He never would have made a move
if he'd known she was still asleep. It's raining outside but he
finds his bike and some clothes where he asked Bernie to leave them
and he heads out. The weather is dangerous but he's so distraught
that he doesn't even care. He's not even properly geared up, wearing
just jeans and a tshirt. No helmet.
He's cursing himself and basically
screaming pain into the night when a station wagon pulls out in front
of him. He slams into the side of it, going up and over the car and
then he lands on the road on the other side. He can feel bones
snapping and his skin being scraped from his body as he skids. Then
it all goes black.
We're in Honey's head now. Katie calls
her early in the morning to tell her that Blake's been in an accident
and he's hurt pretty bad. At first Honey tries to tell herself she
doesn't care. That's what he gets for faking injured to get into her
house. But she can't help but be scared and she eventually heads for the
hospital. When she gets there, she overhears Katie and Blake talking
and realizes Katie was in on the plan. She's hurt that Katie would
trick her like that and assumes that Blake was just out to make fun
of the fat chick. Angrily she takes off.
Katie catches her before she can leave
and drags her back to Blake's room. He looks like hell – broken
arm and leg and bandaged up everywhere. Blake isn't happy she's
there. He knows he royally fucked up and figures his chances are
gone which sucks because Honey is his mate and you only get one of
those in the were-world. Katie insists that the two of them talk and
then she leaves.
Blake apologizes right off the bat. He
tells Honey that he thought she was awake. He'd spoken to her and
she'd responded to him and he had no idea she was still sleeping. I
believe this. I used to have entire conversations with my dad in his
sleep. He'd respond to questions and everything. It happens. Honey
doesn't respond to the apology and Blake gives up all hope. He feels sick. He
wants to cry but that would be such a hedgie thing to do. He goes
all in and tells Honey he loves her. He also tells her he'll leave
and never darken her door again but asks her to look after Katie for
him.
We're in Honey's head now. She tells
us that Blake is in a lot of pain and she doesn't think it's all
physical. She hates that she loves him but she does. She tells him
that he can come home with her and she'll look after him while he
recovers but that doesn't mean she's going to accept his apology –
or him. He apologizes one more time as she walks away. When she
peeks back, he's laying with his arm over his eyes and she's pretty
sure he's crying.
Yeah. I can't take this. You guys
know me and big tough guys crying.
The next few days weaken Honey's mad a
little. For one, Blake is pretty much shirtless the entire time due
to his extensive abrasions and contusions and he's pretty damn yummy
shirtless. For another, he keeps cooking for her. Somehow. On a
broken leg with a broken arm. I think the author forgot how injured
he was. Oh well. Honey wants to jump his broken bones but keeps
reminding herself that he's really battered and bruised.
Somehow I doubt he'd mind.
She comes home from work early one
night intending to take a shower and....um....have some super fun times
where Blake can't hear her. The door to the guest bedroom is closed
so she assumes he's in there resting. She takes off all her clothes
and walks naked to the bathroom.
Who does this when there are guests
in the house?
NO ONE.
She just barges on in the bathroom and
there's Blake getting out of the shower completely naked himself.
And super surprised to see her. She gets hella mad because his casts
are gone and she realizes that he's all healed up. Which makes no
sense because she just told us he was battered up still.
Did you hear that sound? That was me
throwing both hands in the air. Grrrrrr.
He kisses her and then things get under
way. For a very, very long time. Pages and pages and pages. Let's
just say she finds him very.....talented and he makes her very happy. Three or four times. Also, they really love asses. It was....pretty standard stuff for these books but right in the middle I had the stray thought "OMG she's doing a hedgehog" and then I couldn't get the thought back out of my head so the rest wasn't super sexy anymore.
The book ends when
they.....end. I guess that's why they call it the...ahem...climax....of the story.
Wow that was short.
Sorry, Blake, I meant the book.
Honestly.
Ahem.
So that's all we get. Their story obviously continues on in the background of the other books in the series but I'm going to go ahead and assume they get their happily ever after. That's how these books work. When you're "fated to be mated" you pretty much just have to go with it.
The next book I'll recap on here is a full-length book about a cat-shifter. So, yeah....I'm about to ruin housecats for y'all too. You can thank me later.
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