'The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf' Naked Werewolf #2 by Molly HARPER

From the BLURB:

Baring It All

Generations of werewolves have been secretly residing in a secluded valley a stone’s throw from Grundy, Alaska. So when a snooping Outsider comes to Grundy to investigate rumors of lycanthropic shenanigans in the area, the valley’s pack alpha, Maggie Graham, resolves to chase him away, even if doing so takes a quick bite on the butt. What a pity that researcher Nick Thatcher turns out to be so drool-worthy, and that his kisses make Maggie want to sit up and beg. Maggie just can’t seem to convince Nick to leave . . . and even worse, she can’t convinceherself to stay away from him. Cross-species dating is problem enough for a harried alpha female, but on top of that, a rival group of werewolves is trying to move into the valley. With interpack war threatening, Maggie can’t afford to be distracted. Combining romance and a career can be tough for anyone; for a werewolf in love with a human, it may be disastrous. . . .

Maggie Graham knows her place in the pack hierarchy – it’s comfortably on top, bossing everyone else around. As the Alpha of the Grundy Alaskan werewolf pack, Maggie literally has the furry world on her shoulders. Ever since her brother abdicated the pawed throne, Maggie has had to be local sheriff, judge and jury to her little wolf community. So when an anthropological zoologist with Trekkie tendencies comes sniffing around, hunting for ‘werewolves’, it falls to Maggie to interrogate and run him out of town.

It just sucks that Nick Thatcher smells so darn good, and happens to have a whole sexy professor vibe that gets Maggie’s engine revving. It’s also bad timing that Nick turns up right when Maggie’s aunties are dropping boulder-sized hints about match-making and mating for life...

‘The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf’ is the second book in Molly Harper’s ‘Naked Werewolf’ paranormal romance series.

I loved the first book in this series, ‘How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf’. That first book concentrated on the romance of exiled-Alpha, Cooper, and his human mate Mo. In ‘Seducing’, Cooper’s younger sister Maggie is the first-ever female Alpha and coasting in her leadership role when a handsome spanner is thrown in her works, in the form of Nick Thatcher. Wolfy hilarity ensues. . .

In ‘Flirt’, Maggie was a combative and prickly character – angry at her brother for abandoning the pack, and disgruntled at her impotence in the testosterone-filled pack hierarchy. I wasn’t sure how I'd like her as a protagonist, let alone a love interest, given her somewhat mean disposition. But Molly Harper has written Maggie as whip-quick, ballsy chick. I loved how strong she was and unremorsefully cocky. She’s a fantastic protagonist, and utterly unique in the paranormal romance genre;

“Look, Mags, I'm not any happier about him being here than you are. But I think we should take a more subtle approach than your usual ‘bite first, bite again, keep biting until they’re too busy bleeding to death to explain themselves’ method.”

“It if ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” I shot back.

Nick was the perfect Beta to Maggie’s Alpha. He’s no wimp, but I loved that his nerdy obsession with fantasy and werewolves made him well-suited to Maggie’s overbearing personality. Nick was hilarious; referencing Star Trek and Doctor Who and just being generally geeky-gorgeous. Harper writes a bit of a dark back story for Nick, which felt under-developed and seemed to halt mid-way, but overall I loved him and I adored him with Maggie.

Molly Haprer has her tongue firmly in cheek throughout a lot of the ‘Naked Werewolf’ series. I love that Harper adopts a funny-blasé attitude to a lot of werewolf mythology, allowing her to answer and explore a lot of interesting lore. She explores pack dynamics, mating rituals, the possibility of other were-animals . . . while also answering a lot of regular, every-day questions associated with turning furry. These conundrums are the sort of thing only a comedic writer can explore, in all their unperturbed hilarity;

You would think it would be weird to see your male relatives running around naked all the time, but really you stop noticing. It’s sort of sad, really. You’ve seen one penis, you’ve seen them all.

I had to stop saying that in front of my mother, because she said it was something a hooker would put on a business card.

If I have any complaint about this instalment, it’s that Harper appears to have wrapped the series up in two books. There was a strong possibility of two werewolf characters, Samson and Clay, getting their own books and romances . . . but Harper effectively nixes that idea by the end of ‘Seducing’, which is a shame. Samson was Podunk-hilarious; while Clay had an intense, smouldering thing going on . . . I would have loved it if this series continued on past two books to encompass their HEA.

Molly Harper is the queen of the funny paranormal romance. She absolutely excels in the ‘Naked Werewolf’ series – writing irreverently funny and furry romances. I wish the series was going to continue past these two books, but I can’t see that happening with how Harper neatly ties-off ‘The Art of Seducing’. Still, this was a wacky-gorgeous series and it cements Molly Harper as one of my all-time favourite authors.

5/5

'How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf' Naked Werewolf #1 by Molly HARPER

From the BLURB:

Northern Exposure

Even in Grundy, Alaska, it’s unusual to find a naked guy with a bear trap clamped to his ankle on your porch. But when said guy turns into a wolf, recent southern transplant Mo Wenstein has no difficulty identifying the problem. Her surly neighbor Cooper Graham—who has been openly critical of Mo’s ability to adapt to life in Alaska—has trouble of his own. Werewolf trouble.

For Cooper, an Alpha in self-imposed exile from his dysfunctional pack, it’s love at first sniff when it comes to Mo. But Cooper has an even more pressing concern on his mind. Several people around Grundy have been the victims of wolf attacks, and since Cooper has no memory of what he gets up to while in werewolf form, he’s worried that he might be the violent canine in question.

If a wolf cries wolf, it makes sense to listen, yet Mo is convinced that Cooper is not the culprit. Except if he’s not responsible, then who is? And when a werewolf falls head over haunches in love with you, what are you supposed to do anyway? The rules of dating just got a whole lot more complicated. . . .

Mo has had enough. She’s had enough of wheat germ, hemp, protest signs, and communal housing. Her mother and father may still be free-love hippies, but she has long since grown out of their smothering parenting. Mo needs boundaries, so she moves to Alaska. In the dead of night she packs up her house and leaves Mississippi and her parents behind.

Not only is the remote town of Grundy thousands of miles away from her folks, but Mo has plenty of rough and rugged suitors to choose from in this town that has a severe female-shortage. But Mo really just wants to figure out who she is away from her overpowering parents before she embarks on a new relationship . . . so it’s a good thing that the only man in town who revs Mo’s engine is Cooper Graham – the grumpiest, surliest, most unpleasant man she has ever come across.

Mo settles into her new town and excels in her role as resident fry-cook at the local diner. All the while Cooper sets her nerves on edge . . . he’s so anti-social and awful, it’s just a shame he’s also a babe.

But as events unfold, Mo uncovers a supernatural explanation for Cooper’s prickly personality ... heck, you’d be grumpy too if you were a self-exiled Alpha werewolf who was sexually frustrated by his new-found mate.

‘How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf’ is the first book in Molly Harper’s brand-spankin new ‘Naked Werewolf’ paranormal romance series.

Molly Harper is in her element in the paranormal romance genre. Anyone who has read (and loved) ‘Jane Jameson’ knows what to expect from this new series – a combination of sexy, supernatural silliness.

It’s pretty hard to talk about ‘How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf’ without referring back to ‘Jane Jameson’. Obviously, Jane Jameson put Molly Harper on the paranormal map. She tapped into a unique new genre with that comedic urban fantasy, and ‘Naked Werewolf’ owes a lot to the success of ‘Jane’. But while these two series share a genre, Molly Harper offers up a totally new take on her winning formula.

Mo is our leading lady in this new series, and it’s no surprise that she’s a laugh riot. Molly Harper is the queen of writing wittily observant femme fatales, and Mo takes the cake. Harper has given her the most unique and outrageous childhood – complete with hippie parents and commune-living. There are a lot of Freudian personality quirks to Mo that are being subtly explored by Harper, always with tongue-in-cheek humour.

I would say that, on the whole, Jane Jameson was more constantly-hilarious and generally quicker with the quips than Mo. Regardless, I loved her, especially when her relationship with Cooper got steamier. . .

Harper pokes fun at a lot of Alpha male stereotypes through the character of Cooper Graham. I love that Mo called him out on his rugged surliness, even after she learns that it’s all down to his werewolf nature . . . it made for many a funny repartee.

“Men always think they should be in charge of outdoor cooking.” I took the hot-dog package from him and skewered a few. “But the Y chromosome has been programmed with the ‘the blacker my food is, the more manly I am’ gene. I like my processed meats to be somewhere in the unnatural-nitrate-red range. Ergo I will handle the cooking, thank you.”

Cooper was quiet for a long moment.

“You’re trying to come up with some sort of ‘processed meats’ double entendre, aren’t you?” I accused him as I held the sticks over the fire.

“Yeah, you didn’t leave me a lot to work with,” he grumbled.

‘Jane Jameson’ was all about the vampires, but ‘Naked Werewolf’ shifts the focus onto a whole new crop of supernatural beings. But that’s not the only difference. ‘Jane’ definitely had a family focus as Jane and her family coped with her new vampirism – her mother, father, ghostly grandmother and awful sister all played pivotal roles throughout the series. ‘Naked Werewolf’ is more about the absence of family – Mo flees Mississippi to get away from her over-bearing parents, and Cooper has his own dark reasons for abandoning his pack to live life as a lone wolf. Whereas ‘Jane’ was all about learning to love your family (quirks and all) ‘Naked Werewolf’ is about the family we make for ourselves. Mo gathers new friends and makes a place for herself in Grundy, while Cooper finds his family in Mo.

I did have only one small complaint about ‘How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf’, and that was to do with the romance. I don’t think the romantic pacing was quite right. I thought that Mo’s discovery of Cooper’s werewolf was very out-of-the-blue. It seemed like one second she was oblivious, and the next the idea randomly popped into her head that Cooper was the very same werewolf (with blue eyes) that she’d seen lurking around outside her home. It was a very spontaneous and disconnected thought process that led to a rather rushed coupling. For me, it was a little too random, too soon. But that’s my only complaint.

What a shock! – Molly Harper’s new paranormal romance series is spectacular. Anyone who has read ‘Jane Jameson’ should not be surprised that ‘Naked Werewolf’ is another winning mix of hilarious supernatural shenanigans and steamy romance. Even when Harper swaps fangs for fur, she dominates in the paranormal comedy genre.

4.5/5