Touch of Evil, Thrill of The Chase and Micaela's Big Bad

Some paranormal romance and urban fantasy for ya! After all... We're just coming out of the spooky season! 

The award-winning Weird Girls urban fantasy romance series continues to blow away modern fantasy and adventure fans with heart-stopping action and romance. Centered around four unique and powerful sisters, it’s time for Emme Wird, the youngest sister, to step into the supernatural spotlight.

Emme Wird, the healer and powerful telekinetic in the Wird family, hasn’t had the best of luck with males. While her sisters have found their mates and forever loves, Emme has found males that are better left as lost. Is a decent meal with polite conversation too much to ask for? Yes, it is.

When a pack member that Emme has dinner with is discovered dead and dismembered, it is up to Emme and her werewolf friend, Bren, to solve the murder. But spine-tingling danger and touches with evil have ways of bringing close friends closer.

Could the male that Emme searches for be right in front of her? Or will evil snatch him away from her, just as it did once before?

Touch of Evil is my second book by Cecy Robson, and my first book reading about the Wird sisters, and I enjoyed it immensely!

Coming into an existing series at book 10 is cray-cray but it wasn't so bad in this particular case... Touch of Evil is book one in Emme's series which just so happens to be part of the larger series so don't be put off! Everything you need to know about the world to understand the world, and characters, and what's going on is in this book. The only thing is you inevitably get spoilers for the earlier books in the Weird Girls series from reading this one... This doesn't bother me personally but I know it will others.

I found Emme to be likeable and a bit of a contradiction. She comes across as so quiet and sweet, like someone in need of protecting, but she's really quite formidable and fierce. I adored her relationship with Bren and found myself wanting to know much more about him - he's funny - as well as her relationship with her sisters. I enjoyed hearing about Emme's sisters and their mates but I'm guessing that I'll need to read the earlier books in the overarching series to get a lot of the info I want when it comes to them all... It's a minor niggle though. I knew what I was getting into when picking the book up.

Touch of Evil is easy to devour in one sitting. The story flows smoothly, has a nice mystery to solve, some action, some romance and some laughs but it very much felt like an introduction to something bigger. It was a book that was setting the scene for the next big battle in the world of the Wird sisters as well as paving the way for Emme and Bren to have a happy ever after.

With its mix of paranormal romance and urban fantasy, Touch of Evil was a hit for me and I'm excited to see what happens next!

Up-and-coming chef Natalia Spencer has enough on her plate dealing with a struggling restaurant and a corrupt manager selling her out of pantry and kitchen. She doesn't have time for arrogant customers, even a gorgeous corporate raider in a bespoke suit with muscles that just don't stop. Until, of course, he buys her restaurant and saves her life.

Logan Chase, alpha of his lion shifter pride, is intrigued when the feisty chef kicks him out of her restaurant. He's enraged when someone attacks her. And he's intoxicated when he finally gets close enough to kiss her. But when he shifts in front of her and his lion comes out to play, he risks losing Natalia forever.

Natalia just wants to cook and snuggle with a nice guy. Shacking up with a man who's also a lion means inviting a new level of crazy into her life, along with his unruly brothers, and even her werewolf best friends warn her away. Can she and Logan create a steamy relationship from scratch, or are they a recipe for disaster?

It's been a while since I read a good old fashioned paranormal romance of the shapeshifter variety and I enjoyed it well enough but I made the mistake of choosing to read a novella and, well, we all know how they go... Not enough words to truly undertake any world building or develop any depth in the characters. It also leads to a serious case of instalust followed by fast love so, yeah. Thrill of The Chase was a perfectly acceptable shifter romance but I wanted so much more than it gave me.

There's not much more to say other than that. There was a bit of a story, there was a little bit of danger, there was chemistry between Logan and Natalia, there was an instance of shapechanging and then there was some romantic drama before romantic declarations of love. It was that simple and it was fine... It passed an hour or so pleasantly reading but I won't remember it before too long.

I found my boyfriend mid-thrust in a vampire.

Gross. WTH, right? Also, a fork might've been thrown.

I expected to spend the night commiserating with my best friend.

That didn't happen. I found myself on a mission to save her.

And somehow, I woke up in the back of a vehicle, across from a guy who could be described as literal sex on a stick.

Then I found out a few things:

He's seriously and overwhelmingly powerful.

He's hot, like holy cannoli hot.

He's the Big Bad that I've been sensing, but no one knew what kind of a Big Bad he was.

Oh, and apparently, he's kidnapped me.

This was my first experience of Tijan's writing and I enjoyed it. As novella's go, Micaela's big bad was a good one. It had an interesting premise and a satisfying romance. I enjoyed Micaela's snark and banter and I liked the mystery that was Kieran. However, so much wasn't explained! Unsurprisingly, the "threat" was one dimensional, the characters - particularly the secondary characters - needed fleshing out a lot more and the story really would have worked better as a full-length novel... But, as I said, I enjoyed it and if the author was to write more in this world, I'd be ready and waiting to dive straight in! Novellas are just tricky beasts... Especially fantasy/paranormal novellas unless they're set in pre-existing worlds.