Tuesday Review: The Lunatics

 

Layla Fitzpatrick lives a simple life, for a werewolf. And that's just how she likes it. Her childhood was less than ideal. She'd like to spend her adult years flying under the radar of more powerful preternatural creatures. Because she knows from experience what happens when they notice you.

Everything changes one early summer night when she attends a ritual bonding ceremony meant to join two werewolves together for life. Midway through, the spell becomes corrupted and she finds herself unexpectedly mated to the stuffiest shifter she's ever laid eyes on.

Michael Kolbeck is more man than wolf. He spends his days in a skyscraper, building his family's empire. At night, he prowls the streets of Boston, a city where shifters, witches, and vampires walk a delicate tightrope of ceasefire masquerading as peace.

Little do they know that Layla's arrival will act as the spark that ignites the fire, and that thin veneer of peace is about to vanish.

Werewolves, witches, vampires, supernatural politics, and an accidental mating? There was basically no chance I wasn’t going to give The Lunatics a try.

I’ve only read one Navessa Allen book before this, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from her jumping into paranormal romance, but I had a lot of fun with it. I really liked the supernatural world she created and was surprised by how easy it was to keep everything straight. There are a lot of different creatures, pack dynamics, history, and politics happening, but I never felt completely lost trying to figure out who belonged where.

I also really liked Layla and Michael together. Neither of them asked to be magically tied to the other, and watching them deal with the fallout of that was probably my favorite part. I just wish we had gotten more time with them. Their relationship moved pretty quickly, and I wanted more time for them to actually sit in that tension and figure each other out before everything else happening around them took over.

The pacing in general felt a little off for me. There were so many interesting things happening in this world that I wanted the book to slow down and spend more time with some of them. Then I got to the ending and was kind of like...wait, that’s it? I wanted a little more payoff after everything that had been building.

Overall, this was a fun introduction to a new paranormal world, and I definitely appreciate Navessa Allen trying something different. It didn’t quite hit four stars for me, but I enjoyed it enough that I’d absolutely consider picking up the next book to see where she takes this world.