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The Others  Series Book 4
9 hrs and 3 mins

Reviewed By Terra Lyne

I met Samantha (Sam) Carstairs and Noah Baker in book three: The Demon You Know. I just sorta knew they would cook something up after their little tussle in the park. I was very happy I was getting the chance to read/listen to more about Abby Baker’s Army Ranger brother….’cause let’s face it, what could be sexier than a brilliant, soft-hearted, hard-core military man? Not a whole heck of a lot.

Noah has been given an assignment to infiltrate (it makes me feel like such a bad ass to use macho military words- teehee) the headquarters of The Others under the guise of recruiting Lupines into his special branch of the Army, the Spook Squad. What he is really doing is gathering information about the Lupine DNA research that a pack member, Annie, has been working on. Of course, Annie’s best friend just happens to be Sam Carstairs. From the beginning, this assignment didn’t sit right with Noah and his confliction with the situation escalates in a hurry. I totally enjoyed the real emotion Noah felt during his brooding moments: “he was trying to think of any possible way he could make this situation NOT suck”. Love it. One night, while Noah was especially broody Sam came a knockin’ and things get steamy in a hurry. Their relationship grows, he meets the fam (and isn’t that just a treat….the scene when she brings him to meet her overly protective Lupine family had me grinning ear to ear), and Noah’s guilt grows as well. And, while he didn’t come into this assignment with the intent of using Sam to get to Annie, that’s just what he gets accused of. He realizes that whatever this assignment is, it’s not on the up-and-up. He then teams up with the Others and they race to find some missing papers before they can be used to compromise the Lupine’s existence.I enjoyed much of this story. But somewhere in the middle, I started to get annoyed. Maybe it was the incredibly long, drawn out, never-ending love making scene from Noah’s perspective. I was like: blah, blah, blah…move it along! (much harder to skim through long scenes when you’re listening to the audio version) I also realized in the midst of the same scene (I had plenty of time to think, believe me) that they never used precautions and they didn’t in the previous book either. I’m so used to authors squeezing in a reference to “protection” that it actually stood out when Ms. Warren didn’t. They don’t have to worry about making little mini “others”? Also, until the epilogue, the love scenes were from Noah’s POV and while that’s a nice change of pace every now and again, it just made him seem less Alpha Male-ish. It sort of wussified our macho soldier boy. Especially when he said “I want you so bad I think I might die”. Really? Really.

I just didn’t feel like there was enough action and/or danger in this installment. I was never moved by the suspense or anxious to find out what happens next. The scene where Noah gives himself up in front of the council was great.

Christine Warren

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