Dead Heat

(4.5 Hearts)

In Dead Heat, we have Charles and Anna venturing to Arizona to visit an old friend of Charles’ to find a new horse for Anna. The horse that Anna has been riding isn’t challenging enough for her, or at least that is what Charles says. Anna likes the horse she has. He wants her to have something with a little more get-up-and-go, so they go visit an Arabian horse farm.

This horse farm and friend just happen to also belong to the local werewolf alpha, Hosteen. No sooner that they show up, Hosteen starts arguing with Charles for refusing to change his dying son into a werewolf against his son’s will. Let’s not forget that changing someone against their will is a death sentence (Hosteen thinks Charles would get a pass being Bran’s son, yea right).

Then the fae attack Hosteen’s granddaughter-in-law (who he doesn’t like because she is witchborn) and his great-granddaughter. So, once again, Charles and Anna become consultants for the FBI and CANTRIP as they try to track down a fae. It was great to see Charles once again helping people instead of having to kill them. I think it did him a lot of good.

I loved seeing FBI Special Agent Leslie Fisher again. I really enjoyed her in Fair Game. The CANTRIP agents are actually good people in this book. Charles is even surprised that he likes them. Surprisingly, Charles even lets Anna go interview people with just Agent Fisher while he goes with the CANTRIP agents.

As a horse person, I can say that she gives a lot of equine information in an entertaining way throughout Dead Heat. I love the way she talks about the different personalities of the horses. They are like dogs and cats, each breed has general personality traits (Arabians being the Siamese cats of the horse world, loved that line). Then each horse has their own individual personality, too. I really enjoyed how Joseph uses this to his advantage in the story (you’ll just have to read/listen to find out what I’m talking about).

Overall, I really enjoyed Dead Heat. I loved meeting the Arizona pack alpha and his family. I found that I really liked all of them, each in their own way. Hosteen and most of his family are Navajo, so you get to learn some about Navajo life, at least in the modern world. This story has everything you would expect from a Patricia Briggs werewolf book. There is tons of action, adventure and suspense. It did have some pretty heartwarming moments, too. The fae, as always, are not as they seem and are not doing as they said. Is anyone surprised? I know I’m not. I expect to see more of them in the future.