Bea Reviews Pursuing the Bear by Kerry Adrienne

Series: Shifter Wars #2
Publisher: Carina Press
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: November 28th, 2016
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | ARe* | iTunes* | Barnes & Noble
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Blurb from goodreads:

The Shifter Wars heat up when a woman investigates the mysteries surrounding a fierce breed of man and exposes more than just secrets

Bear shifters exist. Professor Bria Lane has known this since she was a child. Now she's returned to the forests of Deep Creek to prove it to the world. She has no idea how close she is to that proof in ruggedly sexy park ranger Derek Poole. Intimately close. But uncovering Derek's wild side comes with a shattering price.

Like a magnet meeting metal, Derek is drawn to Bria. His destiny. His mate. So beautiful and so vulnerable. So dangerous, too: an encroachment of lions, vengeful and vicious, is closing in and they're ready for war. Now is not the time to be distracted like a lovesick cub.

If Bria reveals the truth of the Deep Creek shifters to the world, she'll bring out the worst of both sides. But Derek can't hide his secrets from the love of his life forever. He knows they're playing with fire--and that when passion runs this hot, this reckless, someone's bound to get burned.

This book is approximately 85,000 words

One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you're looking for with an HEA/HFN. It's a promise! Find out more at CarinaPress.com/RomancePromise.

My Thoughts:

Meh. I was excited to read this as I've recently developed a thing for bear shifters and Adrienne is an author I've seen around but hadn't read before. Sadly, the book didn't excite me. It took me several weeks to read as it had trouble keeping my interest and I had no trouble putting it down for days at a time. Although events happen in a relatively short time span, the story drags and drags and drags. We're told ad nauseam about how important Bria's research is to her, how vital it is to her career, and how desperately she wants to please her parents. Okay, I got it the first six times you mentioned it, please shut up now.

The romance moves quickly, helped along by a heaping helping of fated mate trope. That's not a fave trope of mine but some authors pull it off. Adrienne made it so that each partner has free will and can reject the bond, and love occurs independently of the bond, so for me, that part was tolerable. Still, after a long stretch of dancing around each other, the "I love you"s happened quite fast, helped along by a bloody incident. And there's a trope I loathe, though it worked to a point given the parameters of the story, the Big Miscommunication. It actually had a place in the story but it dragged on forever and then BOOM! all is forgiven.

And, while I don't know much about the US national parks system, I'm pretty sure, based on what I know about the civil service, that Adrienne got all her facts wrong or took a whole lot of liberties with the facts. Apart from that glaring flaw, the world building was decent and I'm intrigued but I'm in no rush to read more in this series. The writing just didn't work for me.