Like a Wolf with a Bone by Shelly Laurenston (Howl For It)

Grade-A
Hotness Level-Blaze
Kink Level-None
Series-Pride #0.5
Reviewed by Anne

(Note: I only read Laurenston's story.)

So, I am a big Shelly Laurenston fan.  I’ve been reading her stuff for a while and I love it all.  It’s not often that you can say that about an author, but her stuff is ALL good to me.  It’s set in an alternate present day where shifters (that most full humans don’t know about) exist.  One of the things Laurenston does best with her shifters is bring their animal traits into their personalities and habits, whether in human or animal form.  She's amazingly good! Her stories are  over the top funny and over the top violent, and I just don’t want to put them down when I start them!

I just finished the novella Like a Wolf with a Bone in the anthology Howl For It.  I need to take a moment and mention just how much I appreciate those title.   There’s some nice double entendre along with a nod to the shifterness of the story.  Awesome.

So Like a Wolf with a Bone is a prequel to the current stories.  It takes place in the 70s and there’s some humor to be had from the references that come up.  Darla and Eggie are the parents of one of the most recent heroines, DeeAnn.  Like a Dog with a Bone tells the story of their courtship.  There’s so much to enjoy!

Darla is attacked by a group of full humans.  Eggie manages to fend them off, and by fend them off, I mean that he easily and efficiently kills them all.  However, Darla is hurt and unconscious when Eggie is done with the humans.  Without a whole lot of thought to it, Eggie takes her away from her home – she wasn’t safe there! – and takes her to his military base hospital for treatment.  When Darla wakes up she assesses the situation and after some initial shock, she’s fine with Eggie having rescued her.  So, the conflict in this book doesn’t really come from the two of them together, but from everyone else in the story.  And while there is a lot of humor between Eggie and Darla, it’s the squads of secondary characters that really had me cracking up!

See, Darla has lots of sisters, and Eggie has lots of brothers.  And they are all dating each other.  Yep.  In the rural area I grew up in this wasn’t uncommon.  We used to joke about the family tree growing up, but not out.  Anyway, Darla and Eggie’s siblings have a lot to say about Darla and Eggie being together.  Actually, Darla’s sisters have a lot to say.  They do most of the talking.  And then there’s Eggie’s momma.  She may not know a pacifist from a polygamist, but she's looking out for her boy.  It’s just all good!

This story was ridiculously funny and I enjoyed it from beginning to end.  I highly recommend it!  It’s probably best appreciated if you’ve read some of the other books in the series, especially the more recent ones where DeeAnn and Eggie are mentioned.