Blood of the Pride by Sheryl Nantus (Feb 13, 2012)

				This is the first book in an interesting new series by long time author Sheryl Nantus.  Book 2 “Claws Bared” will be out on January 21st. Rebecca is a cat shifter, and she is an unusual one at that.  She is also a PI, and has just gotten a summons of a severed rabbit foot calling her back home to her Pride.  The same Pride that kicked her out so many years ago. Another Pride mate has been murdered and an investigative reporter is spreading evidence around that ‘cat people’ may exist. Now that Rebecca has to investigate this murder for her old, Pride-she decides to go to the source of the photo and she soon finds herself smitten with this sexy journalist.  Therefore, they decide to investigate together. This was quite the interesting book in that the author really takes her time in setting up the world so that there will be no questions asked by the readers.  I really appreciated the time and effort this took Ms Nantus.  It made it much easier for me to lose myself in the story – and really understand everything that was happening. The characters are well written and defined. The use of Toronto as a home base is a slightly different one and is quite interesting for us south of the boarder.  The story and mystery isn’t too complicated, but just enough to keep you guessing for a while.  There is at least on sort of red herring thrown in to keep you off-kilter. Some may be tempted to classify this as a romance, but romance takes a back seat to all of the investigating and action that fills these pages. In fact, on the one occasion that Rebecca and Bran DO get together, it is not written using explicit language or descriptions.   This was a pleasant shift away from so many of these types of books that put so much emphasis on the sex even though they are touted as action/suspense books. Some of these books come off as more erotica  with the adventure taking a back seat.  Not so with this novel.  Yes you do get romance, it just isn’t an ‘in  your face’ type of romance.