Wolf’s Honor, by Ambrielle Kirk

Desperate times and all that; the theme for this month’s TBR Challenge is “furry friends” and look, I’m sorry, I’m going with shapeshifter romance–because it’s literally the day before, and this ARC has been sitting in the digital TBR since early 2015 (gah!) and it’s supposed to be around 150 pages. (Don’t judge me!)

Fun sidebar: I truly expected that most of the challenge participants would go for pets rather than shapeshifters, and honestly, having been around romancelandia for this long, I really should have known better.

Beware: explicit sex; attempted rape as backstory; fated mates; violence and some gore.

Wolf’s Honor, by Ambrielle Kirk

This book follows a poor orphaned young Black woman on the wrong side of the law and a wealthy, well-connected white man who is, essentially, law enforcement for the wolves.

This is the sixth book in the Caedmon Wolves erotic romance series; it says so right at the top of the NetGalley blurb. And yet, somehow, I recklessly requested the ARC without owning or having read any of the previous stories–or indeed, any of the author’s work.

So, how did the novel work for a reader who dived in knowing nothing about the established universe of the series? Not well, actually; not so much because I wasn’t familiar with the series, but because I found the writing voice somewhat tortured, and the worldbuilding involved a bit too much handwaving, all of which made it hard to follow the plot and, more importantly as a genre romance reader, to connect enough with the main characters to care much about what was happening to and with them.

The publisher sets the story up thusly:

Wolf shifter Connor Maxim is a law-abiding citizen. His motto: Keep the peace. Protect the Pack. His firm, Maxim Securities, was created for this purpose. His honor will be tested when he’s called to deliver on his vows.

The homicide rate escalates to an all time high on Pack territory and all evidence points to two prevalent wolf packs: the Caedmon and the Arnou. The Feds give the leaders of both Packs an ultimatum and a three day deadline. They must find the source of the murders before the Feds intervene.

When a police raid goes awry, Connor’s world collides with that of Antonia Trudeau’s. Under the guise of a striking spitfire of a woman–who happens to be his mate–is also a criminal with a healthy rap sheet. He must decide if love is worth more than duty and honor.

Antonia circumvents more than just the laws…she captures Connor’s heart.

The quick rundown of the universe of the series is this: there are wolf shifters and witches and so on; “the Feds” (the U.S. government) is aware of their existence, and reluctantly willing to let them do their thing so long as they don’t make themselves too conspicuous. A few decades prior, Connor’s father, a human mated to a wolf shifter gets tapped to infiltrate the Pentagon on behalf of one of the packs; eventually, his security and bodyguard business becomes a sort of liaison between said “Feds” and the packs Alphas.

As the book starts, a few too many dead shifters start popping up, some of them alongside the bodies of humans with lengthy criminal records; this leads the human authorities to give the Maxims an ultimatum with a short deadline: find out what’s happening, and put a stop to it, in three days.

That’s already a tall order, given that up to now, no one in the firm had heard anything about the dead shifters; but things are further complicated by shifter hierarchy: Connor has to get the approval of the Alphas to do anything, and this takes time.

Meanwhile…

The blurb doesn’t mention that Antonia has a twin brother, Andrew. The Trudeau siblings were abandoned at birth, and grew up in the foster system, managing somehow to remain together all through their childhood and youth. Now young adults in their early twenties, they have no support network other than each other; their financial circumstances are tight at the best of times, and very precarious otherwise. For this and other reasons, they have moved around the country a bit, as keeping their head above water has too often meant becoming involved with criminals.

Antonia craves a regular life, one where they don’t have to steal or worse to make ends meet; to that end, she’s working food service while attending college, while sharing living space–and expenses–with her twin. However, and unbeknownst to her, Andrew is involved with some sort of mob-like criminal enterprise, mostly as some sort of courier, and has to carry out a “drop” in very specific (and dangerous) circumstances.

As his usual partner has gone missing, Andrew essentially coerces Antonia into helping him out “this one last time”–though it’s clear as can be that this is not the first “last time” by far–which brings them to the club that Connor and his team are surveilling, because reasons (cue long convoluted explanation that nonetheless manages to be so vague as to be meaningless)..

To make things even more contrived, no sooner does Connor see Antonia cross the floor of the club to make the drop, that cops start shooting out the place. He manages to grab her and shoot their way out of the club, dodging both the bad guys and the cops, and we are off to the races.

This is not necessarily a bad premise for a romantic suspense with paranormal elements, but the execution really left a lot to be desired; I found the writing style really off-putting.

For example, as Connor is dragging Antonia away from the bullets, “As her attention waned, the toe of her boot got caught in a crack in a sidewalk” (Chapter 7). Or later, “(she) started at him from between lids scrunched into a narrow glare.” (Chapter 8).

There are also several instances where the author is weirdly specific in ways that yank me out of the story.

Antonia thinks of herself as “small and delicate”–but she’s 5’6″ (1.67m), with Connor being (from her point of view) “at least four heads taller than her and massive in size” (Chapter 7), and I just can’t suspend my disbelief enough for that mental image to gel: my head is pretty small, but it’s still a good 8″ (20cm) from chin to crown, so that puts Connor at *at least* 8′ (2.40m) tall; people that tall are usually lean, and really muscular men are rarely over 7′ (2.1m) tall.

And when this supposedly magnificent specimen of wolf shifter, who, by the way, is a professional bodyguard, chases her later on, she “heard (him) huffing and puffing”.

Or when Antonia crossed the club, Connor at once can barely make out her features, and know that’s she’s stunningly beautiful–even though he doesn’t get a good look at her face until the following chapter:

“…just as he was preparing to get up he saw her. From what Connor could see of her face in the darkened interior, she was pretty. Her beauty stunned him first and foremost, but there was something else about her that had him frozen in place. Despite all the activities going on around her in the bar, she stood out like a blazing light.” (Chapter 6)

Beyond that, the protagonists just don’t fit their own descriptions; despite having grown up hard, between foster care and doing off-the-book jobs for different criminal enterprises over the years, and already having a pretty long rap sheet, Antonia comes across as both naïve and inept. She carries a gun–not in a holster on her person, but in a holster in the same bag with the package that she’s delivering to the bad guys. Which means that when she needs her gun, she can’t get to it.

After a second harrowing escape from the criminals, she actually considers giving herself up to the cops–because a news report with her description stated that she’s “only wanted for questioning”. As if any Black woman in the U.S. would believe any such thing or voluntarily turn herself in without having already lined up a good law firm to ensure her safety.

Meanwhile Connor, the supposed security expert, panics when the shooting starts (the author’s word); later, when they’re ambushed, he immediately resorts to shape shifting, in front of witnesses and without handing his own gun to Antonia first, leaving her helpless. After which, he immediately starts telling her pretty much everything about his world because–of course–“there are indicators that she was his mate”.

And look, I get the whole fated mate trope; I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of books that use it. My problem here is that in this universe, he’s not sure yet that she is his mate; what he does know for a fact is that she’s involved in something shady involving some pretty violent criminals (remember the many dead bodies that start the whole thing?), and that she’s not telling him what she knows. It doesn’t make any sense that someone with his background (family firm, training, and so on), would spill his guts like this, in this time frame (a couple of hours), without some sort of reassurance that she’s not going to betray not just himself, but the whole pack he’s supposedly devoted his life to protect.

Of course, as soon as they have sex it’s all set: he is now sure she’s his mate, and she has a vision where she sees “two wolf puppies” who shift into her sons, which means she’s now sure he’s her destiny. (Never mind that wolves don’t have puppies but cubs ::grrr::)

And that’s essentially the book.

There is no resolution to the whole “wolf shifters’ bodies all over the place” setup, and we never know what was in the box that Antonia was carrying. There is some handwaving about the larger world, but essentially the whole thing is a vehicle for the sex scenes, and as they weren’t particularly well-written, and I didn’t care much for the characters, the whole thing left me cold.

ETA: I just realized that this book can be reviewed as, “too much setup, too little payoff, even with the long, explicit sex scenes”.

Wolf’s Honor gets a 5.00 out of 10.