So, I hate this universe with every fiber of my being. But this particular installment is arguably less objectionable than some of the others.
Don't get me wrong. Dannika Dark has some recurring problems with this world. Setting aside the fact she made the bizarre decision to invent her own breeds of magical humanoids, and has those made-up species interacting with vampires and shifters? The laws and logic of this world are fucked up. Shifter culture is misogynistic, racist, homophobic, and transphobic. Characters care about racial purity WAY too damn much.
Increasingly, I'm finding that all of her books are love stories about communal living. Even if, ostensibly, it's a love story between a man and a woman. The love triangles are never taken all that seriously. In this particular installment, the horse-shifter female lead was in an abusive relationship with a tiger-shifter man. He was clearly not the love of her life, but a one-armed werewolf sure was.
There was never really any doubt who Cecilia was going to end up with.
But, that's the thing. This novel was so clearly trying to be a cautionary tale about domestic violence. Cecilia was a passive, submissive waif of a woman, and her tiger boyfriend controlled and isolated her. He didn't let her keep food in the house, didn't want her to have a job or a means of transportation, didn't encourage her to make friends, and then they went through the classic cycles of abuse.
It was a pretty stereotypical, cookie-cutter domestic violence story.
I'm glad that Dannika Dark was on the right side of that issue. Thank God she wasn't pro-domestic violence. But, still, the protagonist did very little to save herself. It's more a story about how the "pack" with its communal living situation rescued Cecilia. The one-armed man who's a fantastic lover did a lot of the work rescuing Cecilia. There was maybe one scene where Cecilia kicked in horse form. Beyond that...
The pack showed up and taught Cecilia the joys of home decoration and eating food that you actually like.
I don't understand why the author keeps writing about communal living as if it's the most amazing thing in the world. The book series I started with, the Cross-Breed books (set in the same universe) also have all the main characters living together in a sort of castle. The author spends so much time talking about their lack of electricity, and whose job it is to do chores around the house. And she keeps acting like living in a "pack" is clearly the greatest thing that could happen to a person. Earlier books in this series talked about a group of strangers coming together and competing just to be in the pack.
The "packmaster" is, so far as I can tell, an unemployed guy. He has no particular education or skills. He was just born an alpha, and that gives him a couple extra magical powers (like the ability to thicken his penis), and therefore everyone respects his authority.
It's mindboggling.
Dannika Dark is weirdly anti-education. Her characters never attend college, or even trade school. Here, the protagonist opens a kind of book store with no education or training whatsoever. In the previous novel, a different female protagonist became an accountant without any education or training. No one ever talks about going away to college, and no one ever seems to have professional, white-collar jobs. We're supposed to think that two female leads have the best job ever because they own their own shop where they make jewelry and clothes.
... Of course, then they're expected to share their store's profits with the pack, including their unemployed "alpha" husbands.
The society that Dannika Dark designed, and seems so proud of, is sick. Our protagonist is at risk of being passed around and sold as a sex slave because of the way she goes into heat. The books keep talking about the threat of sexual violence for women, and it appears that the "higher authority" occasionally alluded to in these novels cares very little about sexual violence.
These books keep ignoring humans altogether, claiming that every single character lives in a "breed" town. But, 90 percent of Cecilia's problems would be solved by getting a human roommate, and bringing in human law enforcement. Breed government doesn't seem to have any laws against rape, but humans do. The Higher Authority is only concerned with punishing a shifter for changing forms in public, risking exposure to humans.
If Cecilia lived somewhere surrounded by humans, she could just call the regular cops if her abusive boyfriend beat her. He would then be obligated to stay in human form around human authorities. Maybe he could still beat her in that form, but human cops with guns could also definitely kill him in that form.
She should just get a human roommate and travel everywhere with her. If Noah turned into a tiger around the human, then Cecilia would have the evidence to actually get the Higher Authority to care.
This "breed" culture sounds TERRIBLE. You're telling me that if I'm any kind of supernatural being in this reality, I'm expected to live in a pack with a bunch of other people, share my paychecks with them, and the pack's alpha is able to tell me who I'm allowed to date, how much money I have to give up, what chores I'm expected to do for free, etc.? And I'm never expected to go to college or get any sort of white collar job? If I do try to pick up a job, I HAVE to rely upon my own wits and trial and error, because I'm not ALLOWED to take a class in bookkeeping? If I'm female, I'm constantly at risk for sexual violence and slavery?
WHY ARE YOU FANTASIZING ABOUT THIS, DANNIKA DARK!? WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS COZY FOR US? THIS IS FUCKED UP.