Prey by Rachel Vincent

Paperback: 9780778326816, $7.99

With her life no longer at the whims of the werecat alphas, Faythe Saunders, the first female enforcer, and if things work out the first female Alpha in North America, thinks she’ll be able to focus on helping her father face a political battle that started (last book) with his top enforcer and her lover being kicked out of the pack. Instead she finds herself escorting Manx, a female werecat Faythe rescued from a pack of strays who were using her as a breeder, to her own trial for killing her captors. Almost as soon as they step into the Free Area west of the Mississippi river they get caught up in an ambush, and a deep, dark plot that centers on Marc, Faythe’s exiled lover.

With long running series the threat is that readers and the author will become so attached to the characters that the book loses bite as both side don’t want to see harm done to or death of loved characters. But not only does Vincent skirt the edge between independent female lead and anti-baby, anti-family rebel, she holds true to the spirit of the series, which gives no guarantees that everyone will live. Prey is hard forged into a delicate place between gender roles and genres, without ever losing the balance that makes the characters and setting so interesting and compelling. Furthermore the book is nearly 400 pages long, but at the end it’s not going to be enough for readers, leaving off on another cliffhanger. This series far surpasses so many others in terms of each book presenting individual situations and mysteries, yet all the books being so tightly tied together that a marathon reading session would leave very little room to pause.

I can’t ever recall reading a series so tight, so interconnected, before. To top things off there’s definitely a thriller/edge-of-your-seat feel to every book, not to mention a delectable, cliff-hanger end to each volume.