Delighted Reader

Full review at http://delightedreader.com

In Winter of the Wolf, the second book in The Hunt Legacy, we meet Breanne Gallagher right before a tragic event happens that alters her life into a different direction. Breanne has survived foster care after having been found as a young child wandering the woods. She is now an accomplished pastry chef celebrating her accomplishments and living with her foster sister. She sticks to a routine and never wants to move having never had a stable home to live in. One night the two are brutally attacked, Ashley being killed and Breanne being left with wounds both internal and external as well as the horror of being raped. She didn’t go down lightly, but nothing she used against the beast who attacked them worked. The butcher knife just shatters.

After being released from the hospital, Breanne can’t stand to be in the apartment where she was attacked. Going against every instinct to not leave town, she decides to take some time off and see if she can find her heritage or information about her parents. Time to heal is also on the list. She ends up in Cold Creek, but unbeknownst to her, this is the home of shapeshifters.

Zeb and Shay are shapeshifting warriors that hunt hellhounds. Moving from town to town as they are needed to keep shifters safe from the predators. Moving to Cold Creek, they take over a run down fishing lodge, but living together has never been good for them. But the leader of this group has different plans and the two realize they are brothers, but still barely tolerate living with each other. Both men help Breanne, who takes a room at their lodge, but think she is human so they don’t go any further. Both are attracted to her, and that is a puzzle as shapeshifters aren’t attracted to humans.

When a hellhound invades the community, Breanne puts herself in harms way to save a teenager. The men arrive in time to save her but are puzzled as to why the hellhound went after her since they go for shifters first and humans second. This incident turns her normal views on life upside down and makes her back on the table for the two healthy hunky men.

Where to start!?! I am a big fan of Cherise Sinclair’s since the first day I read Master of the Shadowlands. She is a auto buy without even thinking and this was no exception. I am biased to her work, but this time, this was the first time I couldn’t give it an A. The book is longer than her normal books and it seemed to meander more than I liked it too. On the flip side, Breann had a lot to learn, adjust too and heal.

There are so many layers to this book that at times made it hard to understand. There are several types of shifters, but the heros and heroine are wolves, unlike the cat shifters in the first book. Since they are wolves, there is an alpha male and female, different from the cat shifter who is in charge of all the shifters in his area. So there is a lot of drama with both the alpha female and male as the two heros are both alpha. They try to live within the pack but one too many events make that impossible. Even Breanne has to step up against the alpha female several times.

Then there was the oath that Shay made to hunt hellhounds till he died. This means he can’t mate and he moves to where he is called. Because Zeb and Shay are made brothers, the oath is also transferred to Zeb, thus adding to the unrequited love.

When they find out Breanne is a shifter, the two men are made her mentors. This doesn’t mean they mentor her in sex, but they mentor her in shifting and learning about all the rules that normal shifters grow up knowing. But when the Gathering time comes, the two must teach her about the need to mate that will be upon her each month. I won’t go into all the Gathering scenes or even the scenes outside of the Gathering. I will say the sex is clearly Cherise Sinclair kind and it will knock your socks off. While the three have a ménage, most of the scenes are one on one with Breanne and one of the men. That’s not to say there isn’t a ménage scene, just that isn’t what takes over the book.

I throughly enjoyed the book, but only had a problem with at times was that there seemed to be several stories in one book. One problem after another crept up and when it was resolved another took its place.

This is a multilayered, hard look at what happens when a woman is raped and has her world tuned upside down, while finding love with two very unusual men. Hot and sexy, you watch all three learn to love again.