Prickly Business (Portland Pack book 1) by Piper Vaughn and Kenzie Cade

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Blurb

Some people might call Avery Babineaux a prick. He’s a hedgehog shifter from an old-money Louisiana family with a penchant for expensive shoes and a reputation for being a judgmental snob. His attitude is why he and his fated mate are estranged. Not that Avery cares. He doesn’t want to be mated to some blue-collar werewolf anyway. Or so he keeps telling himself.

No werewolf likes to be looked down upon, least of all Dylan Green. He doesn’t need a mate, especially not some snotty hedgehog who sneers at his custom motorcycle shop and calls him a grease monkey. But when Avery gets into trouble with a shady loan shark, Dylan can’t stand by and let him be hurt—whether he wants the brat or not.

Yet once Dylan steps into Avery’s world, he realizes there’s more to Avery than his prickly exterior, and that unexpected vulnerability calls to Dylan’s protective instincts. The sassy little hedgehog needs a keeper, and despite their horrible first impressions, Dylan starts to believe he might be the wolf for the job.

Review

Avery is a hedgehog shifter who has decided to leave his home territory of Louisiana and move to Oregon after falling in love with the state during college. Shifter law dictates that he must join the local wolf pack since Portland falls in that jurisdiction. Though his family has always looked down upon wolf shifters, Avery doesn’t care a bit, and happily joins the pack.

Avery finds his mate, a wolf, and in a drunken mistake, throws him over for not being “good enough”. Dylan is of course hurt, and somewhat glad, because he doesn’t ever want a mate anyway.

Two years go by, and the mates avoid each other at all costs. It isn’t until Avery ends up in trouble because of some gambling debts that they spend any significant time together.

Luckily, the time spent together, coupled with some important new ways of looking at things, shows them that they do have something in common and a future together.

**

This is a bit longer and a little different than the average “shifter” romance. For one, though the instant attraction is there, it isn’t acted upon until much later in the story. In addition, the side stories – Avery’s gambling problems first and later a missing female wolf shifter – take up a lot of the book.

The world building is excellent and the character development is also well done. I enjoyed the romance between Dylan and Avery but I was disappointed by how little time they spent together.

I wish we’d had more of them working on the crime solving together and had seen more of them developing their romance more.

The writing was really good and I am definitely interested in seeing more from this series.

4 of 5 hearts