Bea Reviews Hungry Like the Wolf by Paige Tyler

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Format Read: egalley
Series: SWAT #1
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: January 6, 2015
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | ARe* | Barnes & Noble |
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Blurb from goodreads:

The Dallas SWAT team is hiding one helluva secret . . . they're a pack of wolf shifters.

The team of elite sharpshooters is ultra-secretive—and also the darlings of Dallas. This doesn't sit well with investigative journalist Mackenzie Stone. They must be hiding something . . . and she's determined to find out what.

Keeping Mac at a distance proves impossible for SWAT team commander Gage Dixon. She's smart, sexy, and makes him feel alive for the first time in years. But she's getting dangerously close to the truth—and perilously close to his heart... 

Bea's Thoughts:

Werewolves. As police officers. And there’s romance. And action. So. Much. Catnip! (Pardon the expression.) I was giddy when I saw this book and knew I wanted to read it. I was intrigued by the premise of a SWAT team being composed entirely of werewolves. Certainly they’d have advantages but how would they keep their secret? How did so many wolves end up on the team? How do they stay hidden in plain sight?

Journalist Mackenzie ‘Mac’ Stone also has questions about the SWAT team even though she doesn’t know about their furry secret. Her attention has been caught by the near perfect track record of the team and their low profile. She suspects they’re hiding something; how can a team be so successful, have so few internal problems, and be honest? She’s convinced they’re dirty and begins following them. Pack Alpha Gage at first tries keeping her away but changes his mind and decides to let her in and give her a personal tour. He’s attracted to her, her scent practically overwhelms him, and he has a hard time keeping his distance. She’s equally attracted to him and also has difficulty staying away. She wants a high-profile story, he wants to protect his pack and team, and they want each other. There’s definitely a conflict of interest, which doesn’t stop them from having some steamy, lengthy sex. Apparently these werewolves have built-in Viagra and all-nighters are quite literal.

I’m not a fan of the “fated mate” trope, and while I liked both Gage and Mac and there was definitely heat between them, I couldn’t quite buy their rapid romance especially with all of the conflicts between them. The “I love you” took a little longer, but in all not quite two weeks passes in the story. Mac is supposedly Gage’s one true love, the one (a phrase I seem to be using frequently lately), but when he needs to make a choice between Mac and his pack, it’s surprisingly difficult. Maybe that’s as it should be since he’s the Alpha of the pack but after all the fuss made over how she was his one true love, I expected it to be simpler.

The world building is light though late in the story we get a mini-info dump thanks to Mac’s curiosity. There are sixteen wolves on the team so presumably we will have sixteen stories. I hope that it won’t take Tyler that long to develop the world. That said, she does have a couple twists on the werewolf lore and I look forward to seeing more on them.

Meanwhile, there’s a crime lord after Gage and the SWAT team. His son led a bank robbery, took hostages, and killed people. When he’s killed by the team during hostage retrieval, daddy dearest doesn’t take it well. He makes several attempts on the team, hoping to exact revenge. We get your basic clichés and tropes during this storyline, no big surprises. It leads up to the story finale and the big climax of Mac and Gage’s romance.

HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF, despite its werewolf SWAT premise, takes the safe road and trods the worn path. The characters are interesting though some of the pack could have been better developed, the sex is hot, and there are some tender moments. There’s potential for the series and despite my gripes with the story it kept me reading. It’s worth reading and giving the series a chance.