Merry Ravenell

At its core, it's just a paranormal shifter romance starring the handsome millionaire.
But the execution turned out far less cheesy than I expected especially the last part.

There was real believable conflict between real and flawed partners. It wasn't only the bit of token conflict you find in most pnr with a token bad-guy that is evil just for the sake of it.
An actual world with different packs and alliances surrounds this story which leads to conflicting interests and drama. Characters have relatable reasons for their actions and things make logical sense.

I am honestly very disappointed by how badly received this book seems to be compared to all the same old happy family clichéed cookie cutter romances that easily rate above 4 on average just by virtue of not having complete shit writing (and even for that there are exceptions).

I guess the audience looking for pnr just isn't interested in flawed characters and actual worldbuilding.
Within the genre, it very much deserves a shout-out for the proper worldbuilding and character discovery work that went into it.

To be fair, this book is not entirely free of plot convenience and especially selectively applied werewolf society rules. There apparently exists some immaterial currency called prestige among werewolves which can be traded if you do something that leads to you coming out on top. But this is very vague and only really comes into play if the author couldn't come up with another reason for a character to act in some way or another.… (més)