Book Review: Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston

Hot and Badgered
Author: Shelly Laurenston
Series: The Honey Badgers (Book 1)
Publication: Kensington (March 27, 2018)

Description: It’s not every day that a beautiful naked woman falls out of the sky and lands face-first on grizzly shifter Berg Dunn’s hotel balcony. Definitely they don’t usually hop up and demand his best gun. Berg gives the lady a grizzly-sized t-shirt and his cell phone, too, just on style points. And then she’s gone, taking his XXXL heart with her. By the time he figures out she’s a honey badger shifter, it’s too late.

Honey badgers are survivors. Brutal, vicious, ill-tempered survivors. Or maybe Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan is just pissed that her useless father is trying to get them all killed again, and won’t even tell her how. Protecting her little sisters has always been her job, and she’s not about to let some pesky giant grizzly protection specialist with a network of every shifter in Manhattan get in her way. Wait. He’s trying to help? Why would he want to do that? He’s cute enough that she just might let him tag along—that is, if he can keep up . . .

My Thoughts: This is another of Shelly Laurenston's humorous paranormal romances. Berg Dunn is a grizzly and a security specialist. Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan and a wolf-honey badger hybrid. They meet when Charlie, on the run from unknown assassins, lands naked and bloody on Berg's hotel balcony. She escapes with his best gun and one of his tee-shirts leaving him curious about what her situation was.

Charlie has always been the protector for her two younger half-sisters. Max is all honey badger and a borderline sociopath kept from total mayhem by her love for her sisters. Stevie is the youngest and is a honey badger-Siberian tiger hybrid. She is also a certified genius who is subject to panic attacks. The three girls have banded together since childhood to protect themselves from their father who is immoral, inept and constantly doing things that are likely to get his daughters killed. For example, when she was much younger, he tried to sell Stevie to a Peruvian drug lord to cook up meth for him. Now it looks like he has tried to sell Stevie again and it is up to her sisters to save her.

When they run into Berg again in New York City, he offers to help which is a unique situation for Charlie. No one has ever offered to help. Her MacKilligan family has more or less written them off unless they want to use them to get to their father. Right now they do because Freddy has stolen 100 million British Sterling from his brother and he wants it back. Also their aunt Bernice wants to hire them to make sure that her daughter's wedding to an all-human wealthy man goes ahead without a hitch.

Berg's help lands the girls in a house smack in the middle of the bear section of New York City. Did I mention that Stevie is terrified of bears and tends to have more panic attacks around them? She can often be found hiding up a tree or in a kitchen cupboard. But Charlie's habit of baking when she is under stress quickly endears her to all their sweet loving neighbors.

Lots of characters from earlier books in this series make appearances in this one too. From the lethal wolf Dee Ann Smith to the hockey-obsessed bear Bo Novikov to the Jean-Louis Parker family of jackals. There is a lot of humor in this story and a really nice romance too. My only complaint is that the problem with Freddy MacKilligan wasn't resolved by the end of the book. Of course, that does give lots of room for more books and maybe even romances for Charlie's younger sisters.

Favorite Quote:

"Is something wrong?"

"Wrong? What could be wrong?"

"People are trying to kill you?"

"Well, yeah, there's that," she admitted. "That's definitely a problem. But, ya know . . . sadly not the first time."

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.