Hybrid Reset: Darker Hollow Book 3, Shannon West and T.S. McKinney

A werewolf who has lost his mate, a vampire that's lost his coven.  These two men should mix like oil and water...and they do, but there's also something immensely intriguing about one another that neither man can deny for very long.  Everything is against their union but it's whether or not they're willing to fight for one another to be together that really matters.

It felt like I was missing something.  As soon as the book opened I was wondering if I should have read the first two books in the series.  The answer is yes, even though this can kind of be read as a standalone.  A bit of background was explained at times and I appreciated this because there were so many dynamics and connections that led this little misfit/hybrid pack to where they were that I would have been lost and even more confused without that.  That being said, there were a LOT of words.  The amount of background explanations along with the descriptions just didn't make the plot move forward.  They were kind of more FYI moments.

I wish the story had been more focused on Lucas and Conner because there was so little on the building of a relationship.  I mean, at what point did they actually want more than to give in to the intoxicating smells and chemistry they had?  The discovery of one another so as to give them more than an impossible second blood match seemed to be missing.  It read like Conner and Lucas just had to suffer through this torturous relationship because there was really no other option since fate stuck them together in more ways than one.  There was so little to these two men, for whom the story was written, that I just don't believe in them as a couple.

Their page time was further reduced by the situation between Mason, Finn, and Velerian.  These three men really needed their own third book to sort through all the stuff they've got going on.  Instead, they made room for themselves in Lucas and Conner's story and ended up not giving either relationship pairing justice.

So it sounds as if I'm not a fan of the book.  And that's not entirely true.  While I didn't jive with how the story was put together and the distractions based on confusion and other relationships' issues, I did really like the intricacies of their world.  There's so much here that makes me want to go back and read about how they got to this point in the first place.  And the drama with the hunters?  Their connection to Lucas was both a surprise and a little predictable.  I had a feeling there would be a connection like that, but to the degree it was and the result it brought about between Lucas and Conner, that was a welcome surprise.  Overall, the story had immense potential but needed a bit more of an objective eye when it came to beta reading, I feel.

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