Pursuing the Bear by Kerry Adrienne

The Shifter Wars heat up when a woman investigates the mysteries surrounding a fierce breed of man and exposes more than just secrets

Bear shifters exist. Professor Bria Lane has known this since she was a child. Now she's returned to the forests of Deep Creek to prove it to the world. She has no idea how close she is to that proof in ruggedly sexy park ranger Derek Poole. Intimately close. But uncovering Derek's wild side comes with a shattering price.

Like a magnet meeting metal, Derek is drawn to Bria. His destiny. His mate. So beautiful and so vulnerable. So dangerous, too: an encroachment of lions, vengeful and vicious, is closing in and they're ready for war. Now is not the time to be distracted like a lovesick cub.

If Bria reveals the truth of the Deep Creek shifters to the world, she'll bring out the worst of both sides. But Derek can't hide his secrets from the love of his life forever. He knows they're playing with fire--and that when passion runs this hot, this reckless, someone's bound to get burned.

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Book 2
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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Mary Jo – ☆☆☆
I think I would have benefited from reading book one, but this book did an excellent job of setting the story for Bria and Derek.

Bria is on sabbatical from the university where she is determined to earn tenure. However, she's wary of men due to being betrayed by her ex-boyfriend, who also happens to be a professor at the same university. His determination to obtain tenure led him to steal her research and present it as his own.

Now she's in Deep Creek looking to study bears. Not just any bears, but shifters. As a child, she had seen something should couldn't explain other than the fact that there were indeed animals that could change forms between human and bear.

Derek is a park ranger and a bear shifter. When he finds about Bria's plan to expose the shifters in his park, he's just as determined that Bria keep their secret. When he realizes that Bria is his mate, that only adds to the complications between them.

I did enjoy this book, but I think the story could have benefited from more details about Bria's parents, and their attitude toward her and their determination for her to exceed in academia.


Sarah – ☆☆☆
This felt a little bit like paint-by-numbers shifter story. Bria, a sassy, intelligent university professor, meets Derek, a bear shifter, park ranger, who smells her and knows she’s his mate.

I struggled to get into the story for the first few chapters and I found myself playing shifter bingo trying to remember which famous series first introduced each of the ideas recycled in this one. The writing felt really choppy at the outset but it felt more fluid once I was a third of the way in.

The character development felt quite superficial here. Bria reads as much older than her years, and while there isn’t much sex, the sex scenes were awkward and disjointed encounters, possibly written by someone’s elderly maiden aunt. Derek and Bria never emerged as distinct individuals and this made it difficult to believe in their romance.

I found the pacing far too slow for most of the book, until it raced through and glazed over the climactic battle at warp speed. Ultimately, I finished this story, but while it borrows a great deal, I’m not sure it adds anything to the shifter cannon.

Kerry has loved writing and storytelling since she was a child reading Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. After reading Gone with the Wind, she was forever hooked on the power of books.

She's a college instructor, editor, costumer, artist, cat collector and concert-goer. She enjoys anything creative except cake decorating.

She loves loud music and her Mini Cooper convertible, and spends a lot of time driving around plotting stories.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Pursuing the Bear (Shifter Wars #2) by Kerry Adrienne to read and review.