Badger to the Bone by Shelly LaurenstonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’d probably give this book 4.5 stars if I could.
I love this series so hard. Shelly Laurenston is a brilliantly inventive comic writer. I read this on audio and I will repeat with this review, as I stated in other audio reviews of this series, whilst I really enjoy the narrator, she cannot carry off a Scottish accent to save her life. It drifts between Scotland and Ireland with alarming regularity. However, other than this one lack, her narration is excellent. Her differentiation between the numerous characters is very clear and her acting is very convincing. She’s excellent at drawing you into the plot and helping you bond with the characters.
Aside from the narration, this is a very well crafted story, as are all the others in the series. It’s got great pacing and plot twists galore. There are so many cameo appearances from characters that were in previous books in this universe you might get a little lost, but it’s all part of the charm of this series.
One of my favourite part of the Honey Badger Chronicles is that relationship between the sisters that veers between the homicidal to loyal to the core. The banter is hilarious as always, and the various romantic relationships aren’t a huge part of the story, with the exception of Max’s relationship with Ze, which is the new romantic focus of this book. I also like that the men in their lives know to stay well out of the way when the sisters begin arguing.
As always, the plot revolves around the mess that their father makes of the girls lives and it takes all their ruthless ingenuity to extricate themselves from his chaos. However, Ze and Max meet because of the mess Max’s mother made, this time. Max allows herself to be kidnapped in order to take out the person threatening her and Ze is an inside agent trying to take out the mercenary team that were hired to kidnap her. Max creates a bit of a mess when she decides she has to tell Ze that he’s actually a shifter and they end up killing everyone, not an uncommon event in the lives of these women. When Ze is injured Max decides to take him home, which requires crossing the Atlantic, and help him through his transition to shifter life and along the way their sociopathic tendencies seem to sync rather than clash. It’s a rather unusual romance, but it works for Max.
I would suggest that you do not read this book unless you’ve read the previous two in the Honey Badger Chronicles, if not The Pride and The Pack series, because the stories of these Honey Badger sisters is very tightly woven together and the richness of the story will be lost without all the background from the first two books.
This really is an excellent escapist novel and though it comes across as light there is very tight plotting and writing done in order to make it work. I highly recommend it.
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