Dead Heat: An Alpha and Omega Novel (udgave 2015)

Oddly scattered, but also my favorite in the series so far. ( )

This one started out a little slow for me. Maybe it was all the talk of Anna trying to convince Charles they should have a baby....not sure but something was just, off.

My favorite part of the book was meeting Charles' long time friend, who's not a werewolf, Joseph. His father is an Alpha who wants Charles to try to convince Joseph to change when he goes to die so that he can live longer. (I get it, no parent thinks of out living their kids but Joseph is 80 yrs old.)

We also get a glimpse into some of Charles' adventures with Joseph. You hear Charles relax and laugh. Maggie, Joseph's wife, also has a big part in his past. Interesting the "what could have been" that is brought up.

In this book we get a fae who has been stealing children for decades and leaving fetches (marionette type creatures) in the place of the stolen children. Agent Leslie....um forgot her last name....is back from the last book. And still as cool as ever when it comes to dealing with Charles and Anna.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book it just didn't grab me from the get go like the others have. Does it mean I am going to stop reading the newer ones...um, nope. In fact, off to the next one I go. ( )

I'm not crying... ( )

Please note that if you have not read the previous books in this series what follows has some spoilers from events from those books and the Mercy Thompson series.

What can you say about a book that was practically flawless? Not much really. The last book in this series, Fair Game had a spectacular ending, but I found to be a bit all over the place and had some truly what the heck moments included. With the fae declaring that their truce with the humans was over and starting to hit them where they live we have not really had any out and out fae going against the humans in the Mercy Thompson series. Instead this book is dealing with the fallout.

Things I loved:

Charles and Anna are a strong unit. One of the many reasons why I didn't exactly love Fair Game was because the two had been on the outs when that book started and it took more than halfway before they got back to normal. We do start off this book with Anna and Charles at a slight impasse since Anna wants to have children and Charles is resistant to the idea. In Briggs world female werewolves cannot carry a child to term. Usually around the 3rd or 4th moon the woman miscarries. Male werewolves can still sire children though and we all know that Adam (from the Mercy Thompson series) had a child with his human wife after he was turned. I loved the fact that we have Anna and Charles disagreeing, but not having it be this whole thing where they were not talking to and loving each other. So claps for Ms. Briggs for showing two adults in a marriage not doing that let's not talk about the thing that is bothering us dance that frustrates me in so many books.

Anna has grown a lot from the first book where we were introduced to her (Cry Wolf) and is confident, sassy, and brave. I have to admit the last book drove me nuts with Anna's constant inner dialogue about being an Omega wolf does not mean she is not submissive. There was one scene where she remembered it meant she was not submissive and she was able to move and I was so confused during that whole scene. Why in the world would her remembering not being submissive meant she could move. In this book we do still get to see what an Omega wolf is, however in this book we get tons more show and that made me happy.

Anna met Hosteen's eyes and then showed him what being an Omega really meant as she flooded the room with her own particular and peculiar power...

We also happily get more back-story on Charles. We get introduced to people from his past and they flow into the story quite organically. I wasn't thrilled that Charles for some reason never told Anna about this people (that part threw me), and the explanation of why he didn't was a bit clunky, but I quickly ignored it and just got back to reading the book. We also get to see someone undergo being made into a werewolf which also gave me shivers too. Seriously these scenes in this book are seriously powerful and I could picture everything in my head. It was great.

There are two plots going on in this book and they both work well. We have the A plot (Charles and Anna) and the B plot (the Sani family). Both plots work well with the overall story-line of the fae doing their best to wreak havoc on the humans. I thought that everything flowed together quite naturally and all of the characters in this story had a distinct voice and were written with so many layers. No one we were reading about was a cardboard cut-out and everything we get slowly introduced to brought up more questions for me. For example, I seriously need a book or short story on witches in the Briggs universe. We have been introduced to dark and white witches before. However, with the developments in this book, we have a really good way of looking at the witches and how this plays into the werewolves. Additionally, the story-line also brings back some characters from previous books that I love, i.e. Leslie Fisher from the FBI and Moira and Tom from. I love Moira and Tom and was so disappointed that we did not get more of them in this story.

We get more details about the fae. Always a good thing to me. The fae as a whole are mysteries and we get more light shed on the Gray Lords and what exactly they plan on doing in the future. I would say that if you have any sensitivity at all about stories about children being harmed you may want to skip this book.

We get more officials from the Cantrip agents that I liked a lot who I would love to see again in future installments. Let's just say everyone who was not a bad guy was interesting and I want to read more about them. Heck even tertiary characters in this book were written so well you want to know more about them.

Things I was just okay about:

The whole point of Charles and Anna being in Arizona is for Anna to get a horse that she can ride. The horse is to be a birthday present from Charles to her. I have been around horses when I was younger, but was never a horse crazy kid. I was more into being fascinated by dogs and cats since our dad refused to allow us to have pets. We hear a lot about Arabian horses in this story and a lot of times we take an action break to have Charles and Anna frolicking with the horses. We do get why in one scene why that happened and it made sense. And when you get to the ending you understand why Briggs brought up so much details about these horses and the specific horses in this story. Still, there was a lot of horse detail to wade through in here. I found it fascinating myself, but yeah it becomes a bit much to wade through.

To sum, I loved this book a lot. I would love it if we get a spin-off from the characters that Briggs introduces in Arizona. These characters would be great for some short stories in the future or to pop up in further Alpha and Omega books. I have to know how Chelsea and Kage are going to deal with things. I can't wait until the next book in this series and how the events in this book will come into play in the Mercy-universe. ( )

This was another excellent addition to the Alpha and Omega series. Charles and Anna travel to Arizona which allows Charles to see an old friend and buy Anna an Arabian horse for her 26th birthday. For once, they are not traveling on Bran's business which makes Charles the executioner who eliminates werewolves who are out of control and a danger to werewolves everywhere.

Things go sideways immediately after their arrival. First of all, Charles's old friend Joseph Sani is dying of lung cancer. Even though Charles is willing to turn Joseph to a werewolf and Joseph's father who is the head of the Arizona pack is putting pressure on him to make his son a werewolf, Joseph is adamant about not becoming a werewolf. Charles needs to deal with his grief at the idea of losing one of his few friends.

Second, Joseph's daughter-in-law Chelsea has been placed under a geas to kill her children and then kill herself. Because Chelsea is witchborn, she is able to resist the geas but only by injuring herself with the knife she was supposed to use to murder her children. She is injured so badly that Charles offers her - through her husband Cage - the option of becoming a werewolf which he takes for her.

Third, Charles and Anna need to find the fae who placed the geas and who has been hunting and killing children for hundreds of years in the Phoenix area. They have the help of the FBI in the person of their friend Leslie Fisher who was reassigned to Arizona to be near the fae reservation there after her previous case in Boston. They also have the help of two CNTRP agents who are actually useful.

As they investigate, the fae is still on the hunt for Joseph's five-year-old granddaughter Mackie and Charles and Anna will do anything to keep her safe. The hunt for the fae known as the Doll Collector brings up a lot of issues for Charles and lets Anna know why he has been so reluctant to have children with her.

This was a powerful story. I loved the relationship between Charles and Anna. The emotional intensity of Charles dealing with the grief at the up-coming death of his friend Joseph was strong and brought me to tears more than once as I listened to this story. I loved the message that love is what matters even if the end result is loss and grief and sorrow. ( )