Review: Underground Heat: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set by Ann Gimpel

28 March of 2016 by Jean

Underground Heat: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set By Ann Gimpel

Paranormal Romance

Released January 25, 2016

Self-Published

Series: Underground Heat Series

Shifters keep their friends close and their enemies closer in a shadowy world where the line between hunter and hunted thins, blurs, and finally shatters.

Boxed set contains the complete Underground Heat Series. Three shifter, paranormal romance books. Three HEAs (happy ever after endings). No cliffhangers.

Roman’s Gold:
Once respected members of society, shifters are running for their lives. Devon’s been a cop for a long time. He has shifter blood, but not enough to change into anything. His latest assignment is Kate. From the moment he sees her, he can’t get her out of his mind. But she’s the enemy he’s sworn to eradicate. As he tracks her, the line between hunter and hunted explodes into fiery attraction. If their passion doesn’t save them, it’ll doom them forever.

Wolf Born:
Max leads a dangerous double life in a futuristic California that’s almost out of resources. If Audrey could finesse it, she’d go to work helping the shifter underground. The only sticking point is Max. She’s been in love with him forever. If she joins the underground, she believes she’ll never see him again—but that’s because she has no idea he’s the head of it. After a second attempt on his life, Max faces critical choices. He can’t believe Audrey’s behind the assassination attempts, but everything points her way. Will he follow his head or his heart?

Blood Bond:
Head of the shifter underground’s security force, Johannes has his hands full. He’s the most compelling man Daria’s ever met, but he’s also stubborn and arrogant. Her cat thinks he’s their mate, but if Daria had her way, she’d run hard the other way. Just her bad luck, a series of lethal attacks keep her square in his gunsights. Johannes is desperately attracted to Daria, but anything beyond sex isn’t part of his life plan. He has his reasons. They’ve served him well, and he’s not changing them now.

Reviewed by Jean

Typical of Ann Gimpel the pace is quick, the suspense is palpable and the romance is steamy.

Roman’s Gold
At three centuries Kate Roman has pretty much given up on the idea of finding her fated mate. When she’s confronted with the hunter following her every move and finds herself inexplicably drawn to the Native American cop on her tail it takes her a while to recognize all the signs of finding her “one.” But restless nights, vivid dreams and unending lust plague her. That’s saying something when one is in the business of sex as a surrogate. What’s a gal to do when it appears that her mate is the enemy?

Devon is walking a hard line as the descendant of a half-blood shifter in a society that has rescinded the rights of shifters. He watched his beloved mother rot away in prison for no other reason than her shifter blood. Now he’s been coerced as a cop into a position on a task force to hunt shifters. He’s been given injections to enhance his abilities to detect shifters and he’s been assigned to tail Kate, a woman suspected of being a shifter and one he’s drawn to. He dreams of mountain cats and Kate on a nightly basis. Then the unthinkable happens… He shifts! What’s a guy to do when the world as he knows it is upended and the hunter becomes the hunted.

The pace is fast in this one and it gives you a good introduction to the dangerous world Ms. Gimpel has created for shifters in this series. A great start to the series with plenty of action and enough steam to get your blood pumping.

Wolf Born

Wolf Born segues perfectly from Roman’s Gold. It begins right after Max has performed the mating ritual for Kate and Devon with no real time loss. You get to revisit characters from the first book as well as meeting new ones. Wolf Born throws another series arch into the mix as well. Where Roman’s Gold introduced the fairly recent laws which have outlawed & imprisoned shifters, Wolf Born introduces splinter groups of shifters that are opposed to the actions of the Underground and have in turn targeted Max as the leader of the group.

Max is leading a dangerous double life as the Governor of California and the head of the shifter Underground. He hides the fact that he is a wolf shifter and has to sneak away from his own security force to attend to matters at the Underground compound. Now he’s dealing with attempts on his life by someone that obviously knows he’s a shifter. At the same time, he’s dealing with a growing hunger for his administrative assistant, Audrey. Things become just a little sticky when investigation shows that his assistant has been researching the underground. Could she be the enemy? Everything in him, including his wolf, says no.

Audrey is 37% shifter. Low enough to keep her out of the crosshairs but not so far distant that she hasn’t felt the squeeze from legislation. Her own parents have gone into hiding. Now in her position as Max’s assistant, she’s seen the documents on the serum that will activate someone with lower percentages of shifter blood and give them the ability to shift. She’s determined to gain those abilities and help the underground. She has no clue that Max is a shifter and the one drawback to her plans is leaving him behind. She’s wanted Max since well before he was elected to office.

Again there is plenty of danger and action. Max and Audrey are both drawn to each other and yet both are denying their attraction and growing relationship… Max because he can’t possibly be mated to a non-shifter, Audrey because she figures she has plans to turn in her resignation and join the underground. Plans and intentions aside, the sexual tension continues to grow. Wolf Born was again a great read and I’m looking forward to seeing where Johannes takes the series in Blood Bond.

Blood Bond

Well, I was already intrigued by Johannes after reading Wolf Born. Then I started reading Blood Bond and I instantly dove headlong into infatuation with a new book boyfriend. The fact that he’s all alpha cat and the head of the Underground security might have been enough but the fact that he’s the oldest living shifter in existence, immortal and has a touch of the kinky in his sex gamut sealed the deal. And, you figure all this out before we even meet the heroine, Daria.

Daria is just over six hundred years old which makes her one of the oldest living shifters as well… not quite in league with Johannes… still she’s one of the oldest living mortals. She also has an affinity for healing, hence her career as a doctor. When Daria meets Johannes it’s on the tail end of having worked a horrific bombing at one of the shifter safe houses when she is called in to treat Max who has been hit by sniper fire. With Max stabilized by mysterious means, Daria is intrigued by Johannes. Intrigue or not, though, she isn’t willing to pay any credence to her cat’s claims that he is her true mate. Like it or not, though, she will be working at the Underground compound for the foreseeable future at Johannes command.

Things are becoming desperate in the shifters’ bid for freedom. They are under attack from all sides and it’s going to take some major political maneuvering and maybe just a bit of down and dirty warfare to see an end to the conflict. In the midst of it all, two old souls are going to discover everything they thought they had given up on eons ago… their mated one. Expect plenty of action and enough steam to keep you turning the pages in anticipation. Blood Bond is the perfect culmination of the series. Although I certainly wouldn’t mind revisiting the shifter world Ms. Gimpel has created.

♥♥♥♥♥

O Factor: Spicy

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