Title:  Pursuing The Bear
Series:  Shifter Wars #2
Author:  Kerry Adrienne
Genre:  Paranormal Romance, Shifter Romance
Published:  November 28, 2016
Publisher:  Carina Press
My Rating:  3 stars
Source:  NetGalley
Cover Description:

Bear shifters exist. Professor Bria Lane has known this since she was a child. Now she’s returned to the forests of Deep Creek to prove it to the world. She has no idea how close she is to that proof in ruggedly sexy park ranger Derek Poole. Intimately close. But uncovering Derek’s wild side comes with a shattering price.

Like a magnet meeting metal, Derek is drawn to Bria. His destiny. His mate. So beautiful and so vulnerable. So dangerous, too: an encroachment of lions, vengeful and vicious, is closing in and they’re ready for war. Now is not the time to be distracted like a lovesick cub.

If Bria reveals the truth of the Deep Creek shifters to the world, she’ll bring out the worst of both sides. But Derek can’t hide his secrets from the love of his life forever. He knows they’re playing with fire—and that when passion runs this hot, this reckless, someone’s bound to get burned.

Titles in this series include:  Waking The Bear – Pursuing The Bear – Taming The Lion (2017)

Bria is a professor who is doing research on bear shifters.  Oh, no one knows exactly what she’s researching as she’s lied to the university for this grant.  They believe she’s studying the hydration habits of bears coming out of hibernation.  Ah, no.  As a child, Bria saw a man and his young son walk behind a boulder near a waterfall… and emerge on the other side as a bear with his cub.  She’s never forgotten and this could be the discovery that gets her the academic acclaim that her parents need to see from her to approve of her life choices.  She is determined to find bear shifters at Deep Creek.  She just “knows” that their DNA could cure hundreds of human diseases.  And after all, they aren’t human they’re animals – the research would be humane and could help so many people.

Derick meets Bria on her first day in camp.  He’s a forest ranger, an artist working with wood… and a bear shifter.  He knows the dangers of letting the world know about shifters.  It wouldn’t be long before the government would have them in cages, scientists tearing them apart looking for cures that his kind just did not have the answers for.  It wold be the end of life as they knew it.  He has to find the way to convince her to change the focus of her research.  He hated lying to her but it was survival of his clan and the thousands of shifters of all species around the world at risk here.  But lying, even by omission to his mate was pulling him apart.  There was a war with the mountain lions brewing, and Bria has placed herself right in the middle of the territory where battle could erupt at any moment.  He has to tell her the truth about himself, and convince her to keep their secret… but what if he’s already waited too long.

For me, Pursuing The Bear was a good story, so it got a 3 star rating… which is a “good” story.  I am torn about this story in many ways.  While the base of Bria and Derick’s romance is interesting, the coming war preparations and the intrigue, the double crossing – all of that made an interesting story.  What kept me losing focus and being pulled out of the story constantly was the rehashing of Bria’s parents, how she must find something spectacular to write a paper about because then they’ll love her.  I got that this project is important to Bria the first time it was mentioned.  Her single mindedness on this subject was not driving home the point, it was making it an annoyance within the story to the point where I skimmed over those parts of the dialog because I didn’t want to read it yet again.  Now, I don’t like say that about any story but I got it, let’s move on now.

In the end all I can do is react to what an author gives me, the reader, in a story.  Bria and Derick were interesting, they had a good basic story – yet I was left wanting something more from them that I never got.  A rushed ending, a sudden acceptance of everything Derick has been trying to get Bria to understand wasn’t enough to make this more than a good story for me.  I wish it would have been more, and at this moment I’m not certain if I’ll continue the series.  But… you as a reader have to make up your own mind.  This was my reaction, it might not be yours.

*I received an e-ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley. That does not change what I think of this novel. It is my choice to leave a review giving my personal opinion about this story.*

Available for the Kindle