This is second in a UF series and, true to the genre, the plot and characters carry over, are frequently referenced, and matter more than a little. You definitely want to read in order.
This was a great improvement on the first in that it mitigated almost all the weaknesses and was also an engaging story with family relationships at its heart. Since I'm assuming that you've read the first, I'll reassure you that you mostly know what you're going to get in this book. Carey isn't the driving force in this one, but her relationship with Jacky is still very important, not least as it keeps Heath nearby.
And I'll add that the action scenes worked very well this time, the plot didn't have weak foundations, and the more detailed werecat worldbuilding was both creative and interesting. In this story, we learn more about the children of Hasan and why Jacky doesn't feel very connected to them. She ends up interacting with her brother Jabari on close-enough terms for bitter resentments to surface and for that relationship to evolve in gratifying and interesting ways.
Plus, Jacky continues to take responsibility not just for her own actions but for the broader world around her. Stepping up to the family responsibilities (her family represents what little "leadership" the werecats tolerate amongst their kind) lets her shine on both the action and talky fronts and I just loved seeing her operate with confidence and the desire to do the right thing. She continues to be very paladiny and that continues to be very much my jam.
I was so engaged that I stayed up way too late last night so I really can't not give this five stars. The only real frictions I had in the story were that some important details of Jacky's past still remain hidden from the reader despite the fact that all the siblings seem to know all about everything. And a very distant second is the rocky copy editing (that's also an improvement on the first, but still present). The errors aren't terribly frequent or off-putting, but they're also obvious and should probably have been caught before publication.
Anyway, now I'm impatient for the next and very sad to see that the release is still two months away.
A note about Chaste: The slow-burn with Heath made very little progress, but enough to note. So nothing sexual at all, despite shifter (non-detailed) nudity, so I still consider it chaste.