Indirect Lines - Book Review

By Dana Marie Bell

Synopsis

There’s only one way to win this game: break the rules.

James “Barney” Barnwell is losing his ever-loving mind. Between the threat to the white shifters and a riddle he’s been ordered to solve, he can actually go for ten whole minutes without thinking about Heather, the woman destined to be his mate.

As much as he burns to get the redhead under him, the safest place for her is far away from him. If the bad guys catch the barest hint of her scent on his skin, she’ll become a target.

The way Heather sees it, the quicker she helps the stubborn Bear solve the riddle, the quicker he’ll bite her—literally. But when she’s hurt while protecting her cousin from an attack, she finds herself right where Barney never wanted her: smack dab in the middle of the investigation.

Like it or not, Barney is forced to bring her fully into his crazy world. With his mate’s life in his hands, he’s in a race against time to solve this maddening riddle before the enemy discovers that the Hunter has finally been caught by love.

Warning: This book contains explicit sex, graphic language, lots of questions and maybe even some answers. Remember: Fox holds the key.

Review

YES!!! This is the book I’ve been waiting for. We’re finally getting somewhere with the story arc involving the half-breeds that started in BEAR NECESSITIES and I couldn’t be happier. Since the first book, I feel like we’ve been moving so slowly, only being fed the tiniest bits of information and going nowhere fast. In INDIRECT LINES, we’ve taken a huge leap forward. We now know why the half-breeds are being exterminated and how far the conspiracy goes, even if we don’t know who all the players involved are. The riddle has mostly been solved and the information is being shared to everyone in the shifter community in the hopes of preventing any further deaths. But now that it’s out in the open, will the situation improve or only get so much worse?

The last couple of books in the Halle Shifter series have felt more serious than what I’m used to, so I was happy to see that INDIRECT LINES was a bit more lighthearted and fun, even though we’re still dealing with a very serious problem in the shifter world. I liked Barney and Heather and thought they were a good match, despite Heather being only nineteen and Barney being twenty-seven. I was surprised that Barney was so young, as in the previous books he came across as much older. We met the Leo (the ruler of all shifters) and he was a good addition to this story. He has a great personality and was fun to read; I’d love to see a story about him. Judging by Miss Bell’s website, I think the next book in the series will be about Jamie and Hope. Will their story be the final chapter in this series? Only time will tell, but if it is, I think it will be explosive. INDIRECT LINES is part of a series and cannot be read as a stand-alone.