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 want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Book Description: Sometimes a girl's gotta flex her quills and lay down the law...Katie Carmichael might not be a scary, badass dragon capable of toasting her enemies to a crisp, but that doesn't mean she's a pushover. And sure the roaring, fire-breathing hottie is, uh, hot, but she's a chick with a plan. A plan that includes a secluded old farmhouse and doesn't include a tall, heavily muscled and totally delicious weredragon. Joey Kenton, new owner of said old farmhouse, has plans of his own. They revolve around one curvy, spitfire werehedgehog and whether their children will be hoglets or dragonlets - Joey would be happy with either. Until Katie's life is threatened and he realizes her life is more important than his love for her. Of course, Katie realizes Joey is an idiot and when she revises her plans.......(((That's it. The sentence is NEVER FINISHED.)))
So right off the bat I'm going to tell you that I felt CHEATED by this book. When I first picked it out to read, it merely listed itself as "Honey and Fur #2" the sequel to "Hedging His Bets" which was the super cute hedgehog shifter book I recapped back in May of 2018. ((Blog here)) I was expecting a similar story and was pretty eager to read it. The description sounded like there was going to be some conflict over the plans for this house and I was expecting a cute little hate 'em til you love 'em kind of book. ((Yeah. No.)) However, when I went to Goodreads to log it in, I saw that it's also listed as "Council of Black Dragons #1". 😡 It's like one of those stupid back door pilots ((although there's no back door action)) that TV shows use to try to get you into a new series. This is NOT what I signed up for. I give less than a fuck about dragon politics. And speaking of fucks.......there was only one very boring, vanilla sex scene in this one, ya'll. I didn't even get to bust out a euphemism. Sigh.
So in case you're too lazy to click the link for the first book, in it we were introduced to Blake and Honey. Honey owns a bar and Blake.....well he's a hedgehog and he rides a motorcycle. They were both into asses. That's pretty much it. There wasn't much of a story.
This book begins with Joey in his black
dragon form. Apparently the 'black' part is super important. They are rare I guess and hold a very important position in dragon society. He's just been in a fight with another dragon shifter
and he's losing quite a bit of blood as he flies through the sky. He
isn't worried about his wounds necessarily because he heals fast but he's due for a meeting
soon with some other shifters and he doesn't want to pass out in
front of them from blood loss.
As he flies to the meeting place, he
passes the town where he grew up. He thinks back to his childhood
and his beloved grandpa. A tear escapes his eye and he tries to get
a handle on his emotions really quick. In dragon form, he feels
things more strongly and he doesn't want to get crippled by the pain.
He finally reaches his destination where the alpha of the wolf pack
and the prime of the lion pack are waiting. He lands and shifts,
emerging fully clothed. They others are pretty impressed since they
come out of their shifts naked.
The alpha wolf's name is Max.
The prime lion's name is Alex. Neither of them really trust
Joey. The dragons live outside of shifter society and follow their
own laws. They aren't subject to the laws of the other shifters - especially black dragons because they directly serve the shifter queen - and
that causes a lot of distrust and jealousy. Max and Alex aren't
happy to have Joey among them but he reassures them that he'll be
leaving as soon as he settles his grandfather's estate.
Alex clearly wants him gone
immediately. He tries to pull rank saying that Joey needs to finish
quickly and get out of there as soon as possible. Joey is amused by
this little display. He's not worried about Alex but Alex is clearly
worried about him. Alex says that dragons play by their own rules
and it's clear he thinks Joey is going to do something awful while
he's there. Joey reassures them that he isn't going to do anything
disruptive. He just wants to pack up his grandfather's house, sell
it and be on his way.
The authors are acting like we know these other shifter's and their stories. There's this bit in there where Alex is talking to his wife on his phone and they act like we've met the wife before and know their love story but.....we don't. At least I don't. They didn't appear in the first book of the series. It's possible they are featured in another series but it wasn't associated with this one in the title so I have no idea.
We hop over into Katie's head
now. She's on her way out to Joey's grandfather's house because she
wants to buy it. Well, she wants to buy it alongside Honey and Blake
who are expecting their first baby. She figures Honey, Blake and the
baby hedgie can live in the main house and she'll renovate the barn and live out there.
Honey isn't so sure about this idea. She's always lived in the city
and she isn't sure the big house is right for her small family.
Katie intends to be very persuasive because she really wants this
property.
Katie loves the place mostly because
she loved Joey's grandfather. She spent a lot of time with him
because no one from his family ever visited him. She has a pretty
low opinion of them all now. She brought the old man meals every day and
read to him every night and she feels like the house belongs to her
now.
The attorney has given her permission
to box things up so she's driven out to the house to do so. She
talks Honey into bringing Blake by later to look at the place and
then hangs up the phone. She goes into the house trying not to think
about the day she found Joey's grandfather in there dead. The memory hurts too
much. She's pretty bitter about Joey inheriting the place since he
never answered any of her phone calls and he didn't even show up to
the funeral. (We know that he had council business and couldn't
attend and that he's pretty broken up about that but she doesn't know
that.)
She's been working for awhile when she
hears someone come in the front door. The person doesn't call out
'hello' despite the fact that her car is very visible out front and
they must know she's in here. That leads her to suspect that the
person is there to do her harm. She grabs a very heavy cast iron
skillet and lies in wait by the kitchen door. When poor Joey walks
in, she hits him as hard as she can right in the face.
We hop into Joey's head in time for him
to fall on his ass. His nose is definitely broken and the pain is
intense. He catches sight of his tiny, female attacker and all the
can think about is the fact she's pretty hot and she smells super
good. He gives her an incredulous look and says “Did you just
hit me with a skillet?”
Back with Katie. She's a little
freaked out that getting hit by a ten-pound cast iron skillet
directly in the face didn't seem to phase this guy much. In fact,
his nose has already repaired itself. That tells her two things –
one he's a shifter and two he's a powerful one because he healed
SUPER fast. She's terrified but takes time to notice how gorgeous he
is and how built he looks. She tells us she gets a “yummy
feeling between her thighs” which is a direct quote and not one
of my stupid euphemisms.
They eventually get around to
introducing themselves and Katie is instantly furious. She tells him
that it's not fair that he inherited the house because his
grandfather wanted her to live there with her mate. Then she berates
him for not caring about his grandfather, not visiting him when he
was sick and not coming to his funeral. As she gets closer, she
scents him and realizes he's her mate which just pisses her off even
more. She orders him to contact his lawyer to sell the house to
them. When he asks who 'them' is, she lies and tells them she's in a
polyamorous relationship with Blake and Honey. He growls “mine”
at her because he has also scented her as his mate and then kisses her completely senseless.
((I honestly don't get how this "mate" thing works in these stupid books. How could a hedgehog possibly be mated with a dragon? It makes no sense. Shouldn't they only be mated with other members of their "species"? Or at least a similar species? Like I know you can do donkeys/horses and lions/tigers and wolves/dogs with little problem but they're pretty similar. There's nothing similar about a hedgehog and a reptile. I don't understand how they ended up mated but I guess these books make their own laws.)))
Back to the story....Joey kisses Katie and things get out of hand pretty fast. He
has her on the table and she's ripped his shirt off before he even
breaks the kiss. He lifts his head to ask her if she's really a
hedgehog. I guess he scented it or something. He finds it weird
because hedgehog shifters aren't very common. That brings her back
to reality and she shoves him away from her. She repeats that his
grandfather wanted her to raise her kids on this land and he silently
agrees with her. He's pretty sure his grandfather knew they were
mated ((HOW????? I thought this thing happened when they smelled each other.)) and he wanted them to raise their kids here together. But he
says none of this. He tells her that he'll discuss his plans for the
house with her over dinner.
Katie borrows a black dress from Honey
for the dinner. Honey is smaller than Katie suddenly which confuses
me because I KNOW Katie was the skinny one last book. Blake and Honey even had a conversation about how Blake
preferred Honey's curves to Katie's skinny ass. So this is weird.
Anyway, the dress is nice and tight and she pairs it with fishnets
and studded Doc Martens because she's all goth like that, yo. Honey
is appalled by her fashion choices. They discuss Katie's plan to get
the house and Katie admits she isn't above using sex if it will get
her what she wants. Honey advises her not to “whore herself out”
for a house.
Katie drives to pick Joey up since he
doesn't have a car and she can't exactly fly to the restaurant on his
back. When she gets to the house it's completely dark so she honks
the horn for him. She hears a flap of a wing and then a huge black
dragon lands in front of her car. It startles her but she can't help
noticing how beautiful his beast is. It turns out he can communicate
with her telepathically since they're mates but she doesn't like his
voice in her head much. Her inner hedgie is pretty hot to get at him
and she tries to quiet it down.
Joey just picks up her car in dragon
form and flies them to the restaurant. She protests but he says
that's what she gets for not allowing him to pick her up at her
apartment. In no time at all, they've arrived and he sets her hunk
of junk down safely. He shifts back into human form and opens her
car door for her. As soon as he sees her he mutters “fuck me”
and she tells him no fucking will be going on. He's pretty sure
she's wrong. So am I. I know what kind of book I'm reading.
The restaurant Katie picked is rough
and seedy and Joey is sure she did it deliberately thinking he'd be
too above it to go in. He's not. He's spent his fair share in
places just like this. They go in and Katie's tight black dress
draws the attention of pretty much every man in the room. Joey does
a dragon growl. It's too low in register for the humans to actually
hear but he knows it will make them uneasy on a subliminal level.
The shifters in the room will hear it and know what's up. As
expected, everyone goes back to what they were doing after that and
Katie isn't attracting any more unwelcome attention.
Katie is annoyed at the fact that he
doesn't seem to mind the hell hole she picked out for them. She was
sure it would scare him away. She's annoyed at the growl which
pretty much marks her as his (which she can't even argue with since
they're mates) and she's annoyed that she craves his touch as much as
she does. They get a table and he puts the flirt on pretty hard
core. She likes it but hates that she likes it and finally decides
to escape to the bathroom.
It's a poor choice. It's filthy and
smelly and it makes her want to throw up. She leaves as quickly as
she gets there. In the dingy hallway she's accosted by a man who
grabs her and starts to grind against her because the authors needs a
reason for Katie to be rescued by her big, bad mate. Predictably
that's exactly what happens. She barely has a chance to register
that Joey has morphed into different clothes – ratty leather
jacket, old jeans and motorcycle boots – before the bad guy is
flying through the air. She can tell that Joey is so pissed he's
about to lose control of his shift which would be super bad indoors
since he's a humongous dragon, so she pleads with him to get her out
of there. He's instantly concerned that she's traumatized by the
grabber and comes to her side, leaving the bad guy in a puddle of his
own urine.
Joey gets her out of the restaurant and
then shifts and carries her to a small park where he decides to give
her an enormous orgasm with his fingers for reasons I don't fully
understand. I'm guessing the authors needed something sexy to happen
and the characters weren't ready for actual sex yet so they just jammed this
in......so to speak. That was a hilarious accidental pun right there. After she enjoys his callouses for awhile, he
takes her back home. The entire time he thinks he's being trailed by
another dragon but he can't see it.
They bicker back and forth about the
mate thing. He's on some special dragon council and it's based in Miami so
she knows he'll be leaving soon. She wants to stay on his
grandfather's land so everything between them seems doomed. He's
pretty confident they can figure something out because they're meant
to be together. He asks her to go to dinner with him the next night
and she agrees.
We fast forward to the next night.
She's in the restaurant he picked out but he's 25 minutes late. The
waiter isn't make a secret of the fact that he thinks she got stood
up because she's fat and she finally leaves feeling gross and
dejected. There's a diner a few blocks down and she decides to go
there to get a hamburger since she never got her dinner. Before she
can go in, she looks in the windows and sees Joey in there with a
beautiful woman. She's hurt and dismayed and vindicated in a way.
She knew he wasn't for her and this just proves it. She calls Honey
to come pick her up since she doesn't have her car with her.
So the woman Joey is with is a “rogue”
dragon and there's this whole chapter about how the rogues are
organizing and trying to take over the council and Joey is one of the
people tasked with stopping them by any means necessary. They're just setting up the other book series here and I just don't care.
At all. I'm not recapping any of this. Just know that he's with
this woman on official dragon business and he's not cheating on Katie
despite what she assumes. The rogue (Sophia if you care) vows
to destroy everything Joey loves and then kill him. Yada, yada,
yada.
We skip to the next night. Katie is at
work and she hasn't heard a word from Joey. I'm just going to assume
that he's keeping his distance so that Sophia dragon won't know Katie
is important to him. I literally HATE this trope ((I can't be with you because dangerous people are after me)) and I'm not happy
to find it here in a place I wasn't expecting it. They close the bar
and Honey sends Katie out back with the trash. On her way to the
dumpster, Katie trips over something in the dark. It turns out to be
a dragon claw ((which is enormous by the way - think sword sized)) and she's instantly
worried about Joey. The only reason a dragon gets separated from one
of its claws is if it's dead. I guess they don't just lose them like
fingernails.
Sophia rocks up and picks up the sharp
claw. She tells Katie that Joey killed her brother and now she's
going to use her brother's claw to kill Katie. Katie tries to defend
herself with a broken beer bottle but she knows she has no chance.
Before Sophia can kill her, though, Joey arrives to save the day.
There's a huge dragon battle and they're joined by a third dragon
named Adra who is a friend of Joey's on the council I guess.
I really don't care about any of this, ya'll. The good guys triumph
and everyone shifts back to human form.
Blake rocks up just to yell at Joey for
putting a member of his pack in danger. He seems to have no real
role in this book and I feel sorry for him. He was such a good
hedgie (remember when he PEED on that horrible vet? 😂😆😂).
We suddenly skip in time. I think it's
been a day. Joey is looking for Katie so he can say goodbye to her.
He knows that his work means he's in continual danger and he can't
expose her to that. She means too much to him. You
know.....somehow.....despite the fact they met like two days ago, have had TWO conversations and been on 0.33% of a date. This shifter thing kills me.
Anyway, Katie isn't at home so he goes to look for her at Honey and
Blake's apartment. Honey isn't happy to see him and doesn't want to
let him in but Katie tells her it's okay. Joey can sense how broken
and sad she is and it guts him.
He ends up blurting out the whole story
about the rogues and the council and his work – none of which the
authors actually bother to share with us, by the way. It just says
he tells her the whole story and she understands after hearing it.
I'm glad someone does. Katie isn't deterred by anything she heard
but Joey is still convinced he has to leave her for her own good. He
just doesn't know how to tell her.
She hasn't been sleeping so he
convinces her to lay down and tells her he'll stay until she goes to
sleep. She does pretty quickly, dreaming of the little babies
they'll have someday that they'll raise on his grandfather's land.
When she wakes up, though, she's alone in the bed with a letter
explaining that he's leaving and not coming back. He left his
grandfather's house to her though. So there's that.
We skip ahead a week. Joey's a mess.
He's in the castle that the 12 members of the black dragon council and their queen have their meetings at. He
hasn't slept or eaten and he's in a foul mood. He wishes he could
just retire and go be with Katie but you aren't allowed to retire
from the 12. It's an obligation for eternity. Adra is deliberately
provoking him inside the council room saying horrible things about
Katie and he finally gets so mad he can't control his shift. It's
forbidden to shift inside the castle but he can't stop it and he
attacks Adra. She and the queen exchange a look and then the fight
is on. I assumed this was an 'out' for Joey. I assumed that Adra and the queen planned this out so that he would shift in a forbidden place and get kicked off the council and thereby be allowed to live out a normal life in South Carolina or wherever the fuck Katie is. I ASSUMED the authors included this for AN ACTUAL REASON but no. NO. NO!!!!!!!!!!!! None of this meant anything. It was just there.
Somewhere in the middle of the fight,
Katie wanders into the council room. She thanks Adra for telling her how to find Joey and then tells Joey she wants to talk to him. He tries
to get her to leave because she isn't supposed to be there but she's
pissed and determined to have her say.
The queen asks Katie what's going on
and Katie helpfully reviews the entire book for her, minus the digital orgasm in the park. The queen agrees that Joey was an idiot and then she tells
the rest of the 12 to give them some privacy. Everyone but Joey and
Katie leaves the room. Joey instantly tells her how dangerous it was
to walk right into a dragon's lair like that but she doesn't care.
She lays into him for leaving her and tells him that danger is just a
part of life she's willing to accept as his mate. Then he picks her up and carries her to his bedroom.
It's all very basic slot A into tab B
stuff. It was actually kind of boring to read. It wasn't even very detailed. Nothing spectacularly weird or unusual happens
except that Joey gives her the mating bite on her shoulder.
After that, things are wrapped up
neatly in a bow. For some reason, Katie gives up her dream of owning
his grandfather's land and decides to move to Miami so Joey can
continue his work. The council of dragons welcomes her and seems
hopeful at Joey's mating. No one's ever mated with a black dragon
before and they didn't think it was possible until Katie came along.
I'm sure the next series will focus on them all getting their mates.
I'm not reading it. I like simple little stories, not dramatic rogue
vs the council tales.
I was super disappointed in this book. I was hoping for something like "Hedging His Bets" and I ended up in a stupid series-launching story for a series I would never, ever read. It's like they pulled a bait-and-switch on me and gave me one of those creepy dolls made with pantyhose instead of a Cabbage Patch Kid. ((You are all WAY too young for that reference. I should find pictures.))
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