These books can get a bit wordy and have somewhat awkward language in conversations, but I enjoy them as quick, easy reads. For example, Mac's job is described multiple times, the whole set-up for the yes/no game between Mac and Heath at the wedding only for them to ask 2 questions each and go back inside, and when the group makes plans for their surprise attacks.
With the inter-species pairings popping up everywhere and the visions Tessa and May have had I'm hoping this is heading to Grey Lake becoming one large pack. Now that Heath wants all the different species to start working together to protect their town. It will be fun to see the shifters coming together. I have always been a little surprised how much the shifters keep separate, at least so far in this book, when they always talk about it being a small town where word travels fast and they have all of 5 police officers.
I'm curious how pregnancy works for eagle shifters. It's interesting for shifters in general, but at least the mammal shifters have live babies. Birds lay eggs. All of the shifters have said they have to shift routinely, they just have varying lengths they can go between shifts. So what happens when one is pregnant? Does the magic just like magic it into a pocket? Do they not have to shift or are they unable to shift? Also, there are mixed pairings of shifters - if the kid is a different shifter than the mom how can mom shift? Or is the kid always the same shifter type as the mom? Though if the kid was always the same as mom that wouldn't make sense with Iris and Aiden's dad taking Iris' mom as a mate.
It was nice to see Mac and Heath work through their issues together and come to compromises. Obviously they both want to keep the other safe and both want their partner to realize they can protect themselves. I'm curious to see if Aiden and Jamie are going to be a mated pair eventually, so far there haven't been any gay couples in this particular series. It would explain why Aiden's dad is so hard on him though and why he targeted Jamie and somehow cursed him to remain in his wolf form.
We're getting in deep now too with all these mysterious threads that Alden has been weaving for years unnoticed. He already tried to buy a bunch of land in the area before Tessa shut him down, then he wormed his way in with the cougar shifters to try and take out members of Grey Lake who will stand against him in the big battle we're heading towards, then he also injected Jamie with SOMETHING, and he's been testing something on the bears in Grey Lake. He's been a busy guy while also running all the companies he owns. You know he's going to be behind the recent budget cuts too that supposedly came from the city level in the last book.
I was really sad to see Cora being a traitor in Grey Lake! I know she did it for her father, and people will do a lot of objectionable things when their family is threatened, but for her and Noah to be able to get away with it for so long? Alden must be really good at finding and corrupting people who would be good at undercover work since none of the people in this so-called "small town" are caught until it's too late.
I'm curious if Tessa recognized the phoenix from her visions and from May's paintings wasn't her? Was that her first clue she was about to die? She seems to be going downhill pretty fast, is that how it works with phoenix shifters in this world? I've read others where phoenix shifters took after the mythological beings - they died and were reborn. Phoenix aren't usually included in most shifter stories just because I feel like it can be hard to deal with. The closest I have seen recently was a story that had a thunderbird as a side character but even he was at the end of his long life. Well, besides the very cheesy reverse harem I read where she found out she was a phoenix when she died in a car accident flying through the windshield and woke up with her clothes burned off.