Shifting Love

Born a shape-shifter, Magdalene O’Shea had been an outcast her entire life. At the age of twenty, she met another one of her kind, Marcus, and she learned that she was not alone in the world after all. Marcus poured training into her, taught her how to use her abilities to better the world. He gave her assignments, men who needed to learn how to open their hearts. She was to help that man let go of whatever problems bound him, make him fall in love with her and then set him free to find his real “true love”.

Fourteen years have passed since her first assignment and Maggie is tired. She now owns her own bookstore called Soul Provisions and is working towards a normal life for herself. When Marcus calls one day, two years after they last spoke, and tells Maggie he needs to meet with her, she refuses. Not only had he been her teacher and mentor, but he had been her lover as well and she didn’t want to relive those times. Then he brings up her next assignment, Mr. Julian McDonald, and she has no choice. She feels indebted to him, to her gifts, to her past.

Julian McDonald is a self-made businessman, one who owns a Fortune 500 company at that. His heart has been closed for quite sometime due to the sudden deaths of his wife and son. Since that time, he has buried himself in work and charity, anything to take his mind off the tragedy, to help him forget. When he meets Maggie at a charity auction, it is instant attraction and he finds himself in a battle of wits with her. Little does he know that he is her “assignment” and he is about to learn how to love again.

Maggie soon finds herself falling in love with Julian and dreads the day she has to set him free. She has never felt so strongly about one of her assignments before. Something is different about him, something special. Will Maggie be able to help Julian open his heart once again? Will she be able to let him go once she does?

Miss Flannery has written a beautiful tale in Shifting Love. I found myself staying up until the early hours of the morning to finish the next chapter. The shape-shifting in this book is unlike anything I’ve read before. Her explanations are so vivid, I felt like I was watching the heroine change myself, and the actions didn’t overwhelm the story but flowed in perfectly with the romance. The book also holds a few surprises and I loved the way they were weaved in. Constance O’Day-Flannery has been added to my list of “must read” authors and I am anxiously waiting to see what she rolls out next.

Reviewed by: Jennifer M