Book Review: The Unleashing by Shelly Laurenston

The Unleashing

Author: Shelly Laurenston
Genre: paranormal romance
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: March 31, 2015
Stars: Four crow-shaped ones

Description: Kera Watson never expected to face death behind a Los Angeles coffee shop. Not after surviving two tours lugging an M16 around the Middle East. If it wasn’t for her hot Viking customer showing up too late to help, nobody would even see her die.

In uncountable years of service to the Allfather Odin, Ludvig “Vig” Rundstöm has never seen anyone kick ass with quite as much style as Kera. He knows one way to save her life—but she might not like it. Signing up with the Crows will get Kera a new set of battle buddies: cackling, gossiping, squabbling, party-hearty women. With wings. So not the Marines.

But Vig can’t give up on someone as special as Kera. With a storm of oh-crap magic speeding straight for L.A., survival will depend on combining their strengths: Kera’s discipline, Vig’s loyalty… and the Crows’ sheer love of battle. Boy, are they in trouble
Review: I first picked up this book because it's one of the books of the week reviewed on the Heaving Bosoms podcast. I've never really read a shifter romance before (outside of Twilight, but do we actually count Twilight?) so I wasn't totally sure what to expect except I was thinking people would turn into crows?
Which didn't quite happen.

All in all, this book kicked quite a bit of ass. The two main characters were kind of eh for me, but all the side characters were GREAT, and Brodie the Avenging Crow Pitbull Of Badassitude made this whole book worth while. 
I won't give you a summary. You can read the summary. I will tell you that the romance, while sweet and hot, was almost secondary to the actual plot of the book which was these two clans of shifters? People who serve gods? idk? figuring out what the fuck is happening, and learning to come together as a somewhat cohesive group. 

This is not at all a fluffy romance. It's definitely funny in parts, but people get their heads smooshed like grapes often, and both of the MCs give no second thought to killing people. I'm not saying that's a bad thing (for a fictional character), but it's not what I'm used to in romances, so it took me a little while to come to terms with the fact that while I didn't dislike the MCs at all, in fact I enjoyed them quite a bit, they did kind of rub me the wrong way. 

I liked the (trope? personality type?) of the side characters more, so I am quite looking forward to reading books 2 and 3 to find out about Jace and Erin and their respective love interests. And I very much hope there is a Chloe/Josef book, because you KNOW there would be hot hate sex in that one.

Thank you, Shelly Laurenston, for making me enjoy a shifter romance, even though no one actually turned into an animal.