REVIEW: Hard Luck Hellhound by Zoe Chant
Book Reviews / C+ ReviewsContemporary / curse / fated mate / novella / POC / shapeshifters / witchcraftComments Off on REVIEW: Hard Luck Hellhound by Zoe Chant
When you’re a hellhound, there’s no such thing as good luck—not even your true mate showing up on your doorstep.
All Russ wants is to keep his inner hellhound quiet. The last time it took over his life, it left everything in a shambles. He can’t let that happen again. He just has to stick with his new routine: Run his bar and look after his regulars. (And break up mice having barroom brawls. Shifter towns can get… complicated.)
Then Anita Sanchez’s car breaks down right outside his door. She’s sweet, sunny, and his true mate—and he needs to keep his hands off her.
Anita’s determined positivity covers an awful secret; thanks to an ancient family curse, whenever anyone touches her, it burns like hellfire.
But when Russ touches her, it feels like heaven…
She’s spent years trying to avoid getting hurt. Now she’s determined to get a life. She wants to start it here—and she can’t imagine it without him. Because as much as she already loves this mysterious small town, she can’t help loving him even more.
No matter what Russ thinks, Anita knows he’s not a monster. He’s the best man she’s ever met, and she’s going to prove it to him.
Hard Luck Hellhound is a short, sweet shifter romance with plenty of warmth and humor.
Dear Ms. Chant,
Even though this is part of a series with “Cute but Prickly,” it stands on its own. In fact, I’m not even sure why these are part of the same series as I didn’t notice any overlaps in place or characters. It’s cute, it’s funny (or the first part is), it’s short, and I breezed through it.
Russ Wynn used to have an intense, high paying IT job but that was before he was bitten by a hellhound shifter. Life as he knew it went to … well, hell and now he owns a roadside bar in Heaven’s Limits where other shifters live quietly. That’s if the mouse shifters don’t start a bar fight. It’s fine, it’s good, but it’s lonely plus he needs a new waitress after his last one up and quit.
Anita Sanchez just hopes that her battered car will get her the rest of the way to the next way station of her life – helping a relative rehab a house. Her car has other ideas and dies not far from what looks like a barn but turns out to be a roadside bar where a helpful man offers her more than she’s ever gotten before – a place to stay (free!) and a job. Determined to be the best waitress possible, Anita throws herself into it, having a blast. That is until all the odd things she’s noticed finally get her to ask, “What is this place?” The answer will change both her life and Russ’s.
The novella starts out with a lot of dry humor –
“Russ, this is incredible.” She dug through the box, and, reassuringly, her face was glowing with pleasure and excitement like it was Christmas morning. She lifted up one of the squashed, folded squares of bedsheet and pressed a corner of it to one cheek, like she was luxuriating in the texture. She caressed it against her skin.
Russ experienced the unusual sensation of being jealous of his sheets.
– plus quick expositional bits to quickly get all that background info out of the way. There are two bar regulars whose interactions and decisions had me laughing. Then Anita arrives in her poor, little car and the story slowly begins easing towards something a bit more serious. Anita’s “problem” is hinted at for a while before we finally learn the messy details that have haunted her family for generations. Meanwhile as she is feeling drawn to Russ for reasons, he’s terrified and backs off thus confusing everyone.
The resolution arrives quickly but given how each of them have been hiding and living with something the rest of the world would freak out at, the fact that they immediately believe the other’s issue fits into the novella length. I would have enjoyed a bit more depth all around. Also since they’re fated mates, that got the whole romance wrapped up in a jiffy, too. One thing that didn’t make sense is how at one point Anita thinks about how much her family smothered her and took care of her and later there she is driving a beat up car and acting as if someone doing something nice for her is surprising. It didn’t jibe. I enjoyed the humor and watching Russ finally get a grip on living with his hellhound but more space and some continuity work would have helped. C+
~Jayne
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
