Cool Nights, Hot Dreams: Wolves of Aurora Book 1, Athena Blaez

An accidental walk through dreams brings Sean Hastings to Ryder Cole, an intensely appealing man who makes him feel things he's never felt before.  Life is complicated enough without adding in the dreamwalking and a deadbeat father reappearing in his life, but when Sean meets the object of the previous night's "encounter" it seems that life is never too complicated for love.  Ryder has his work cut out for him with Sean, but if he can't find answers to the problems plaguing his pack and their town they may not get a chance to find out what could be between them.

The plot here was really interesting, though I did feel it suffered a bit from fits and starts rather than a smooth progression and the relationship-building was more mild than I hoped.  Finding the balance between a budding relationship and the drama that surrounds it is quite difficult, so I'm not saying I could have done any better.  By the end we do get to a good sense of where things are going and that the trouble has no quick fix.

I liked the characters on a surface level.  Each one had good points to keep both the story and the relationship progressing, but while the romantic aspect was slow-moving and a bit too simplistic, the drama surrounding them grew in big jumps with no gradual quickening of events.  I'm definitely interesting in diving back into this rather intriguing world the author has created to find out what happens next in the town and who the MC pairing might be.  I feel that it would work well to continue with Sean and Ryder being the recurring couple since we've got some unsolved issues with Sean's gift as well as some pack dynamics that need a bit of sorting on Ryder's side of things, but would be equally interested if we get a new relationship and find a broadening web that brings the community into even greater entanglement.  Overall I was pleased with what I read but felt the pacing and balance could have used quite a bit of fine tuning.

*$3.99 on Amazon or FREE on KU!