Shelly Laurenston – Bite Me

The ninth book in the Pride series, published April 7, 2014.
Genre: paranormal romance
Cover: nice



Livy Kowalski has no time for idiots. When you shapeshift into a honey badger, getting through life’s irritants is a finely honed skill. Until she gets stuck housing her nutso cousin and dealing with her dad’s untimely and unexplained demise.
That’s where Vic Barinov comes in—or his house does. Vic can’t step outside without coming back to find Livy devouring his honey stash and getting the TV remote sticky. It gets his animal instincts all riled up. But he’ll have to woo her at high speed: all hell is breaking loose, and Livy is leading the charge…


I was interested in Livy (Olivia) Kowalski from the first moment I met her in one of the previous books. So when I discovered this was her story, I was anticipating it with glee! Livy sure is a character like none other. She is a honey badger, really violent and honest, she does not play games and goes after what she wants. Unlike her criminal family, she is not a thief or con artist, although she loves sneaking into people’s houses when they are away and make herself at home. She is also a great artist in photography, but she is afraid she has lost her drive. So when Blaine asks her to be her wedding photographer, she thinks she cannot have sunk lower.


I love this series, and I am kind of sad that Shelly Laurenston is going to focus on new things for a while, but she sure ended with a good book. The main story arc is solved, the bad guys are caught and punished and there are still plenty of characters who could use their own story in the future.

I loved Livy and of course bear-tiger Vic Barinov. They are so great together, especially as they both have no clue they are really much more than friends. Vic stands up for her, and when she is helping him with his investigation into the whereabouts of the man who is organizing hunts on shifters, she finds the stuffed body of her father.

Why did her mother lie to her, and who is in his coffin for real? Livy is determined to get to the truth and find the man who killed her father. She might not have liked him, but he was still her father, and honey badgers are all about revenge. She takes charge of her large family, and they all work together to help them. Who ever is protecting this man, and influencing the big agencies in quitting the case, has no chance against them.
I really disliked Livy’s mother and her female relatives, but I really liked her father’s male family. They are all thieves and con artists, and they don’t understand Livy and her dislike of that life at all, but at least they respect her choices as she is still their niece.

I had so much fun reading this story, some of the Jackal prodigies play a part in this book as well, like the creepy Kyle, as Livy and his big sister are best of friends. Of course many of the secondary characters in this book have featured in the previous books, and as always I love seeing them again.

Livy is especially vicious playing the roller derby, and I totally understand why she only gets to play the major games and not all of them. And it was refreshing that Vic had no interest in sports at all, compared to all the other male heroes so far.

Great series, highly recommend it. It is fun, is fast paced, lots of humor, violence and some hot love scenes and many types of shifters, and as far as I remember, the only one with hybrids. I have read other books where the cubs/pups will be one of the species their parents are, but these are mixed.

9 stars.

© 2014 Reviews by Aurian