A MidSummer Night’s Heat

At the end of Mays’s book In The Heat of the Night, we learned that Belle Gray, daughter of Artemis Gray, and sister of Kearnan and Brendan, was missing. Not that they really thought anything was wrong, but Belle had taken care of their father for so long, never thinking of herself, that it was just out of character for her to leave without telling anyone where she was going.

In fact, Belle is just glad to have a few days to herself, without any demands on her from anyone else. She’s having a vacation by herself for the first time in her life, and she is loving it. Getting ready to change into her wolf form and go for a run in the forest, she hears shots being fired, and a wolf howl in pain. Knowing that she cannot leave the animal to suffer, she goes looking for it – and gets quite a surprise! The victim is a handsome werewolf named Alex Whitehorse – unknown to her, he is a former suitor of her sister-in-law Serena, and he needs a mate...

I love this series! Mays’s writing is so skilled that the emotions of her characters feel deep and authentic to the reader. This brings the story alive and pulls the reader into the tale so that she feels she is there in person. Needless to say, I enjoyed this one as much as I have enjoyed the previous books in this series – which is to say, A LOT! Belle is a great character – just as Alpha as her father and siblings (I wonder how the family managed to get along for so many years if all of them were Alphas). Once she knows what she wants – and she wants Alex – she goes after it, no dilly dallying around! Alex is a bit more problematic as a character, and does not seem quite as fully developed as Belle. The secondary characters were delightful, especially Belle’s kitten – have you ever heard of a werewolf that had a cat?

The love scenes are intense and graphic, measuring up to the author’s high standard set in her previous “Heat” stories. There’s just something about hot wolfie sex...

Reviewed by: Jean