My Brother's Keeper - Book Review

By Alanea Alder

Synopsis

Two hundred years ago Kendrick Ashwood had a premonition that showed him the gruesome image of his baby brother being killed in the line of duty while serving with the Alpha Unit. When centuries go by and Keelan is still alive and well, he begins to relax. He believes that his prayers sent to the Gods to make him wrong this one time have been answered.

As Kendrick feels his godsdaughter’s magic flare out of control he immediately merges with her in an attempt to rein it in. That is when he learns of the tragedy that has taken his only family away from him.

Using every resource at his disposal he immediately heads for Lycaonia to find out for himself who would be suicidal enough to harm his brother. What he finds shocks him to his core.

Anne Bennett gets a phone call that changes her life. Her new best friend Keelan has been hurt and his commander is asking her to move in to help take care of him. Her heart breaks when she hears from his family that the dreams she has been having of them together were shared by Keelan and that he was meant to be her mate. Upon meeting Kendrick, her entire world is shaken. His more mature appearance and perpetual frown makes him look more like the man from her dreams than Keelan ever did.

As the Alpha Unit races to find the enemies who have stolen Keelan’s soul and covered Lycaonia in black magic, Kendrick begins to uncover dreadful truth behind the necklaces. When turning to Anne feels more natural than it should, Kendrick faces the fact that Anne truly is his mate.

As the paranormal world teeters on the brink of chaos, he finds himself protecting not his brother’s mate, but his own.

Review

MY BROTHER’S KEEPER is the fifth book in the Bewitched and Bewildered series and was another great read. The story continues on from MY SAVIOR and follows the mating of Kendrick (witch) and Anne (human). As with the previous books, the focus is still on the ferals and the necklaces that give them paranormal abilities they normally wouldn’t possess. Here, we find out how the necklaces are made, and that information is truly terrifying.

Kendrick is Keelan’s older brother, and if you’ve read the previous book you will know that Keelan “died” protecting Amelia and the Alpha Unit from a trap that would have stripped them of their souls. I thought Kendrick was going to be a stick-in-the-mud, but I loved his character. He fits in perfectly with the members of the Alpha Unit and their mates. In fact, he’s almost like a male version of Meryn; they think alike and both have a huge thirst for knowledge.

Anne is a trained nurse, brought in by the Unit to look after Keelan, who they all think is her mate. Turns out it was the right family, but the wrong brother. Other than saying she’s nice and that she also fits in with the men and women of the house, there’s not much else I can say about her because the story focused on Kendrick and the necklaces.

MY BROTHER’S KEEPER is told in dual POVs, with the epilogue being told in Elizabeth’s as she and Meryn are summoned by her uncle to the vampire city of Noctem Falls. I get the impression that the next several books will take place in Noctem Falls and will focus on the Unit members there finding their mates. We still don’t know who is behind the creation of the necklaces, so that story arc is still ongoing. As I’ve come to expect with this series, the story had me laughing throughout: from Meryn’s ranking system to the Girl Scout cookies. On to the next book.