REVIEW: License to Shift by Kathy Lyons

License to Shift by Kathy Lyons: Mark Robertson has always known he wasn’t going to live a long life. Born with too much grizzly DNA, he’ll eventually turn feral, at which point his best friend and Alpha, Carl, would be forced to kill him. He’s finding it harder and harder to stay in human form, then Julie shows up looking for her father’s journals. When it becomes clear that someone else is also looking for them and danger has shown up at their doorstep, Mark needs to find the strength to stay human to protect Julie, who his bear is convinced is his mate.

Julie was a great character. When she discovers Mark’s a shifter, she doesn’t run in the other direction; she accepts both the man and the bear and is determined to find a way to keep him from being feral. She kept fairly calm in scary circumstances, and wasn’t afraid to stand up to anyone, including Carl.

“I’m your alpha now, Julie. You’re going to have to listen to me.”
Her eyes focused on him. “No one else does. Why do I have to?”
Carl growled at her, a sound that was half affection and half exasperation. “Mark is so not doing your orientation. He’s a bad influence.”

I enjoyed Mark as well. Even though he’s convinced he’s going to die, he fights to stay human long enough to protect Julie from those who are after her. Having known each other as teenagers, he feels bad for how he had to exclude her from activities with the shifters so she wouldn’t discover their secret, and he’s willing to acknowledge that the way she was treated was wrong.

This is the second book in the series. I recommend reading them in order. The plot involving experimentations on shifters that was in The Bear Who Loved Me continues on in License to Shift. While this book could be read as a standalone, the background of the experiments and the characters involved aren’t fully explained here. To gain a better understanding of what’s going on with that, it’s best to have read the previous book.

This book has suspense, romance, and a bit of humor. If you enjoy paranormal shifter stories, I recommend License to Shift.

Book Info:

Publication: October 4, 2016 | Forever Yours | Grizzlies Gone Wild #2

Julie Simon returns to Saginaw, Michigan, to find her ailing father’s missing research on local shapeshifter lore. Unlucky for her, the only person who can help her is the darkly sexy Mark Robertson, the guy who spent an entire summer giving her the cold shoulder-and one white-hot night of pleasure…

Mark is a hair’s breadth away from going feral. Soon, his grizzly side will destroy everything that makes him a man. And after years of fighting, Mark is ready to give in to the beast. Then Julie-the gorgeous, curvy book nerd who awakened his most primal desires as a young man-shows up at his door. Now, he’s fighting an insatiable longing to claim her as his mate. But Julie isn’t the only one after her father’s research. Someone-or something-evil is tracking Julie’s every move…