For the Bear’s Eyes Only by Kathy Lyons

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Title: For the Bear's Eyes Only
Author: Kathy Lyons
Series: Grizzlies Gone Wild #3
Published by: Forever Yours
Release Date: November 15, 2016
Format: eARC
Pages: 290
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2019 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Monthly Motif Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:

Blurb:

BEAR ON THE PROWL

Life as Alan Carman knew it is over. After he was captured and tortured by a mysterious enemy, the lawyer's latent grizzly-shifter DNA was triggered. The old Alan is gone, and in his place is a terrifying vicious beast that lives and breathes for revenge. He will track down the person who did this to him-and it'll be the last thing he ever does.

Tonya Kappes refuses to let Alan run headlong to his death. A bear-shifting deputy-and the Gladwin Clan's beta-Tonya faces Alan with one weapon: the love that's lingered between them since they were kids. But the idealistic man she knew has changed...into something raw, primal, and unbelievably sexy, igniting every lustful cell in her body. And, if Alan can't learn to love the beast inside himself, maybe he can love the animal in her . . .

***

The Grizzlies Gone Wild Series

Book 1: The Bear Who Loved Me
Book 2: License to Shift
Book 3: For the Bear's Eyes Only

My Review:

I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

3 stars — I was actually *really* looking forward to this book (despite the fact that I am 2 years late in my review).  But…something just didn’t quite work for me in this one, so Mark’s book remains my favourite.  (and please note that I don’t think you can read it without reading the first 2…you would survive, but you would be missing enough to be annoying)

Can I admit that I got bored in this book?  I mean, maybe it was just me, but I found myself wanting to skim…I mean, I even wanted to skim the sex scenes.  I wonder if part of that is that I was disappointed with Alan and Tonya.  There was so much self-hate, which translated into hate of the “other”, and I just didn’t have enough patience for it.  They eventually got to a better place, but it was almost too late for me, you know?  Most of that self-hate is obviously on Alan.  But as he’s sitting there calling all these animal things about himself “monster” and disgusting, etc, he’s inadvertently making commentary on the shifters he’s grown up with…and Tonya, whom he supposedly has a huge crush on.  It didn’t jibe.  I sort of got it, but it was a little too far or something.  I expected to feel all the things for him and what he was going through, and in the end I mostly felt like he was a jerk who wasn’t even trying.  I think that’s half my own impatience, and half the story itself, so it might not come across that way to every reader.

I was also, initially, really disappointed in Tonya’s sudden feelings for Alan now that he’s a shifter.  Or at least, that’s the impression I got for the like the whole first half of the book.  It reminded me of all those books where the couple doesn’t fall in love until one of them loses a whole bunch of weight, or starts working out, or whatever.  Now, that changed, and we got to see background, and it does appear she had feelings for him before…but by that time I was already annoyed with Tonya thinking she only liked him now that he was “like her”.  So I’m having a hard time reconciling my initial annoyance with how the story turned out…why couldn’t we have seen that from the beginning?  I feel like it hurt the story.

And in the end because of those silly things, I wasn’t that invested in either character (they were okay, I just wasn’t in love), and I wasn’t that invested in their romance.  I thought it would be nice, but I wasn’t clamouring for it.  I did appreciate Alan’s growth and understanding, though I felt like I wouldn’t have minded seeing *his* thoughts in that final turnaround moment in the climax.

So yeah.  It was good, but it was marred by my own high expectations…which is a bummer, but what can you do?  Still an interesting world, but for some reason I’ve lost my verve for it.