Painter, Brooke Belle, is running from her past and hoping that a few weeks in a quaint country cabin will bring her artistic muse back from the brink. But when she lands smack dab in the middle of Asheland Mobile Park, she’s sure there’s been a mistake. Not only has her mentor rented her a dilapidated mobile home in the middle of nowhere, but the trailer park is filled with big, burly, growly, … growly, flirty, sexy-as-hell lumberjacks. And one in particular is making her think that maybe she’s landed right where she needs to be.
Tagan James has a lot on his shoulders. As second in a woodcutting crew of bear shifters, he’s got all he can handle keeping his people from tearing each other apart on the job site. But when the beautiful, and terribly human, Brooke Belle lands on his doorstep, all honest and vulnerable and pulling at his animal’s protective instincts, he has to decide whether to boot her out of his park to protect his heart, or take a risk and save her muse.
Every bear shifter knows finding a mate can destroy a dominant like him. But as Brooke shows Tagan just how strong she can be, he’s second guessing everything—including his vow to never fall for a woman.
Content Warning: explicit love scenes, naughty language, and piles of sexy shifter secrets.
Adult only bear shifter romance.
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Lumberjack Werebear (Saw Bears, Book 1) by TS Joyce is where my girlmance started with this author. I love paranormal and TS’s writing style and humour has drawn me in. The story is short, but it has everything to keep you engaged and entertained, invested and shifters. It was easy to fall in love with these broken complicated and multi layered alpha men and the women who are strong enough to love them. But the road to love although instant is by no means easy. It is also an emotional ride as we learn just who and what these shifters are and what they have been through.
Warning! There are a few spoilers in the discussion of certain matters. If you hate ’em, don’t read this review.
Okay, I’m becoming a sucker for werebear PNR. Sue me. Since I have taken care of many a lumber jack, both in Ohio and Alaska, I was curious to see how well T.S. Joyce would be in recreating such an occupation. (I also needed some brain candy while I was trying to hunt down the source of all these damn fruit flies buzzing around me!)
If you want werebear PNR, this book definitely hit the mark for kicking back and just enjoying a book for what it was rather than be looking for something mind-blowing. This is a short novel in length, one that did have me check a few times to see how much more I had left. (Reminded me of “Are we there yet?” at times. Don’t know why I even checked. Maybe I didn’t want the story to end…) And that might be the reason. Not that it was riveting so I could not put it down because in some places it was. I guess I enjoyed Tagan and Brooke enough that I didn’t want the action to end. Both are quite sympathetic, but even though we discovered a lot about Brooke, I felt the writer did not do Tagan any favors by keeping him and his past so secretive. I mean, I hardly know what he looks like except… he wears his emotions on his sleeve. I know who his mother is. I now that his father is gone. He goes from being Second to becoming Alpha. He really wants Brooke but wants it to be her choice with full informed consent, but never had that time to present things as they are to her. I need more.
Continuity was poor. There were large gaps, even up to three months, in which information/storyline I felt would had been important to include, wasn’t, on both Brooke’s and Tagan’s parts. Sorry, but at the end of the book, I had way too many questions, and I doubt these will be addressed at any time thereafter. Not happy at all. Had I been this person’s editor, I would have insisted this to had been corrected. Sorry, but how else did this person expect the readership to respond? Come on! Perhaps T.S. was getting bored with this storyline? It shows in how the end was rushed with an inadequate epilogue… WAIT! There wasn’t an epilogue at all! It just dropped you. I believe this created a great disservice to the readers. I would have given it a star had the continuity and world-crafting had been better.
After searching through previous books T.S. Joyce wrote, it appears that all the info I may wish for in world-crafting might already be there. I had to go back to the original advertisement on Amazon to get the reading order list. Wished it was in the book. It appears that this book IS the original of the Damon’s Mountains’ series, SO it didn’t do world-crafting to the level I taught when I was teaching this subject to aspiring writers back in the 1980s-1990s. I hope it improves as I read.
Read it via KU and determine for yourself if you think you should actually buy. I thought it was worth it for brain candy. I might regret the investment later on, but that’s how it goes for now.
Addendum: I went to iBooks, only to discover the audio version is being advertised as the “unabridged” version. WTF? What was excluded from the ebook version? And why?? This isn’t fair to the readership that read in order to maintain comprehension. (Translation: I don’t do audio.) I’m taking away a star, giving this book only two stars!
This was the first book I read from TS Joyce. I’ve since read everyone of this series and the spinnoffs.
Read it! Entertaining characters, they’ll make you laugh and make you cry. Well worth the time to read and the time will fly by while you do.
Brooke is lost. She’s lost her muse, lost her way in life, and it appears that she’s lost in a very real sense since she finds herself on the dilapidated doorstep of a trailer park instead of a cozy cabin retreat. When her mentor sends her out into nature she never expected the sexy, burly, ill-tempered men she’s expected to stay near. Tagan wasn’t expecting a human woman to wind up on his doorstep either. But it seems that Fate has other things in mind when these two learn that their best chance at forever is each other. They’ll have to fight demons inside and adversaries outside to claim their happiness and if their inner strength isn’t up to the task, it just might spell the end…permanently.
This was a sweet story with a lot of healing, individual evolution, an endearing cast of side characters, a little passion, and a whole lot of heart.
As much as I love it when a Change happens and the Changed fully accepts with wonder and a firm sense of reality, not underestimating all the challenges they’ll face, this instance of Change was very different and, dare I say, better. The way Brooke felt at that moment and then what she realized needed to happen and finally to her full evolution…stunning.
There were quite a few cheesy moments but they were overshadowed by the need to come to grips with personal tragedy and not just overcome it, but to own it and all its facets. I truly enjoyed getting to know these characters and felt that Tagan and Brooke were fantastic together. They had both chemistry and feels. I do wish there were a bit more with getting to know Tagan since we get to know Brooke quite well. Other than that small issue and the fact that this was a bit too short for such a good story, this was a great read and I’m very eager to dive into the rest of the series.