Max’s voice is sort of garbled, like he has a mouth full of marbles, and the lack of clarity bugged me. Maybe no one could do it well, hard to say, but the unique wording and timing just didn’t translate well when read aloud by Max Lehnen. Tara does a funny play on words, uses sounds and pauses that work to put you in the mind of a wolf running through the woods. Something that translates really well on paper, but would take a discerning eye/ear for to read aloud. Ahhh – I get it! The rhythm of the book, the writing style, mimics animal thought and impressions. Was it the narrator or the story that was bothering me so much? So, I went back to read the book again. Ugh! At first I had to stop listening and go back to the book. Then I read the second in the series, and loved it even more! I was therefore excited to listen to the audio very much.

When I read this book earlier in the year, I loved it straight away. I had to combine the audio and book review together because the unique nature of the book influences the audio version’s palatability. In the end, however, we see their soft-underbellies and they manage to worm their way into our hearts. Paris is very cocky and stand-offish, hard to wrap your mental cuddle around. It takes some doing – Cole is really stiff and sometimes hard to read. Tara Lain likes to give us quirky, sometimes odd MCs and then show us why we should love them.

This makes his being mated to Cole very hard, and forms the crux of their dilemma. He stutters, he’s awkward, he’s shy, and – he’s mated to a panther! Paris, his mate, is extremely cat like, shifty, sinuous, slinky and … solitary. This is a unique shifter book in that Cole is no typical alpha.

The Pack or the Panther by Tara Lain