Tuesday, October 19, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 26, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Pretty Little Lion is the second book in Suleikha Snyder's paranormal romance series "Third Shift".  If you're one of the probably like 5 people who actually follow this blog, you might have noticed that I never reviewed the first book - that's because I picked this one up on Netgalley before I realized it was part of a series, and thus have not read book 1 (the book's description does not make clear this is a series, although if you look it up on amazon, it's at least listed as one).  Needless to say, this is not the intended way to read this book, so take this review for what it's worth - BUT the book works quite well even if you do jump into the series with this one, with the characters both new and presumably old ringing true (a look at the prior book's description suggests that the main pairing from that book is a minor presence really in this one, which helps).  

So yeah, I actually liked Pretty Little Lion as a fun enjoyable SF/F romance....well as much as such a romance in a dystopian alternate present version of our world can be.  This is a story where the shapeshifters and supernatural beings are known to exist, and the 2016 election resulted in a fascist dark present for America even worse than our current world, making things difficult for the cast of mostly supernatural freedom fighters.  The characters, both the good guys and the one neutral one who gets POV segments, are all well done, and I really liked reading about their relationships as they worked together to try and fight against a racist gangster with plans for shapeshifters and the world.  The biggest complaint is that the sex scenes aren't particularly great, even though the book has a bunch of them, but everything else is good enough to make me want to catch up with book 1 eventually.  

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
To the world, Meghna Saxena-Saunders is a celebrity influencer, ex-wife of a famous Hollywood himbo, and a piece of eye candy with more looks than sense, which might explain why she's now hanging on the arm of dangerous racist arms dealer Mirko Aston, a man with little care for those who are non-white...like Meghna.  Of course Meghna is secretly something else - an Apsara capable of seducing others with her magical beauty, working for a network of supernatural beings, the Vidrohi as a spy and assassin.  Mirko is just her latest target....and her most important, having been responsible for the disappearance of a good friend and fellow supernatural agent.   

For Elijah Richter, lion shifter and secret co-founder of the anti-fascist org Third Shift, Meghna seems the perfect way to get an in on Mirko Aston.  If he seduces her, he can find out Aston's secrets, and take action to stop him from furthering his terrorist empire.  But when his attempt at seducing Meghna goes wrong, he discovers that she is far more than he could have imagined, and now both of them have their missions seemingly blown at the worst possible time.  

To make up for it and to find her friend, Meghna will have to work with Third Shift, despite her distrust of anyone working with a team....and the irresistible mutual attraction she feels with Elijah, which goes against everything she knows in life....
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Pretty Little Lion is centered around the pairing of Meghna and Elijah, but it spends a good deal of its time dealing with relationships between other characters as well.  And so while most of our story takes place from Meghna/Elijah's POVs, we also have parts from Grace's POV* - the human doctor who forms the backbone secretly for Third Shift and has a relationship with Vampire agent Finn and human attorney Nate - and from Tavi's POV, the more neutral Vampire with past connections to Finn and who has his own agenda as an enforcer for Mirko's group.  Tavi's is the only perspective that isn't really romantic in any way (although he has his own connections), but he's an interesting change of pace, who will undoubtedly show up more in future books in this series.  

*I should point out that practically everyone is a person of color here - Elijah is Black, Meghna is Indian, Grace is Black/Asian, etc

But again the major parts of this novel are the primary relationship of Meghna and Elijah and the secondary relationship of Grace and Finn (with Nate as well taking a smaller role in that trio).  And they're all really likable and enjoyable - Elijah is the team player, really the team leader, who has a lot of bravado and tries to do the best he can with his team to fight the fascist rise in the setting - where the US is basically fractured due to its fascist national government, making traveling out of New York a pain for a black guy like Elijah - and while he finds himself unable to shake his attraction to Meghna, he never underestimates her or acts like she can't handle herself, but instead tries his best to get her to believe they can work together as a team. 

And Meghna is her own really great character - a loner who lost her teenage idealism when her mother came back into her life at 16 and introduced herself as a supernatural commander, leading to her secret role as an assassin in the public guise of a celebrity...an assassin used to working alone and having no one she can trust.  And so while the idea of her attraction to another is just as foreign to her as it is to Elijah, it's more because she doesn't feel she can trust anyone, and the idea of working with someone both personally and professionally, at least not from arm's length, is entirely foreign to her.  She's entirely capable on her own, but the teamwork and camaraderie of Third Shift is both attractive and confusing to her, and so much of this book involves her learning to get used to it...and to allow herself to like it. 

I should add that the secondary relationships, taking place in Grace's point of view, are almost better than the primary one, as Grace is just fantastic, even if her story probably started last book (and thus before I started reading this series), when she fell into bed with Nate and vampire Finn, an omnisexual vampire who makes moves on seemingly everyone, but somehow wound up with her.  And Grace has to deal with what she feels about that (especially as Finn deals with a past relationship in Tavi showing up at the same time) to go with her professional feelings about her dual role as a Third Shift operative, their backbone and planner really, and a doctor for a public organization.  Her role, both romantically and otherwise, is just really really well done, and I really hope she gets a center stage feature in a later book. 

Really I have only two complaints about this book.  The first is that while the book has an abundance of sex scenes....and they're not particularly great in my opinion.  I'm not really going to get too far into that, other than to say they're more matter of fact than actually....great.  The second is that while this book is accessible as the second book in a series, and it ends decently well in terms of how it handles the romance, it leaves the general spy/action plot pretty much inconclusive in the end, just dropping it at a certain point and leaving it for a later book to conclude.  It's not a fully satisfying ending as a result. 

Still, this is an enjoyable book overall if you're looking for paranormal romance, and I will be going back to book 1 to see what I missed....which is pretty much the most I usually hope for when I pick up a book like this.  Recommended. 

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