Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Universal Link
Length: 67,000 words
Cover Design: Alexandria Corza
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Blurb
The South Pacific Archipelago is home to a tiny island community of around three hundred scientists… and twenty thousand dinosaurs. As a paleogeneticist, Kit Sterling leads a team studying the dinosaurs to unlock the unanswered questions of evolution.
But there is something more dangerous than dinosaurs on the islands.
Head ranger Logan Beck discovers evidence of poachers, while rumors of a black market for dinosaur leather swirl around the community. Kit and Logan haven’t always gotten along professionally, though that has nothing to do with their attraction to each other. So when they’re thrown together to save an injured infant dinosaur, their professional disdain turns into a clandestine romance.
With not just the injured dinosaur at risk, but all of the precious dinosaurs on the islands too, Kit and Logan have to figure out how to balance their budding romance without letting their careers go extinct.
Review
Logan takes his job of head ranger very seriously
particularly since it entails watching after the last living dinosaurs on
earth. Keeping them safe, unexploited and their habitat unaffected by the
encroaching world seems like something simple given they are contained on a
fairly isolated archipelago but nothing could be farther from the truth. Supposedly
dinosaur leather has hit the black market for sale and getting his hands on a
piece of it for his colleague Kit Sterling to test has been less than
successful. But what if someone is poaching the dinosaurs for their skin? How
can Logan and his understaffed group of rangers ever manage to catch them in
action and prove to his corporate minded supervisor that the threat to the dino
population is very real?
Kit Sterling may often not agree with everything Logan Beck
says but one thing they agree on completely is safeguarding the rare and
beautiful animals they have been given to study. Kit is a lab rat and very good
at what he does. He never goes into the field unlike Logan and that is where
most of their arguments stem from—the lack of understanding that Logan’s job is
just as important as Kit’s research. When Logan brings back an injured baby
dinosaur and enlists Kit’s help in raising it, the two become closer than
either ever expected and constant bickering morphs into mutual attraction. But
something isn’t quite right and Kit is determined to help Logan save the
dinosaurs before it’s too late.
Anna Martin has released an interesting mystery/romance
novel called Something Wild which
features new and unusual breeds of living dinosaurs. While many have their
hereditary roots in the dinos you and I grew up reading about, the author has
given them a whole new look and behaviors which produced some really sweet
creatures—the best being the dissimosaur. In all honesty it’s little Dizzy, the
rescued infant dinosaur that Logan brings home to rehabilitate, that steals
this novel. Once you are able to suspend your disbelief that these creatures
could still roam the earth the story becomes very interesting. Reading about
how Logan interacts with them, the danger some represent and the idea that
poachers could be killing them certainly captured my interest.
Unfortunately that interest didn’t extend to all aspects of
the novel. Whether it was due to only hearing about how much Kit and Logan
argued or the lack of relationship building in the novel itself, I had a
difficult time feeling any connection between Kit and Logan. One moment Logan
is asking Kit if he ever wants to have kids and admitting he doesn’t give the
reality of the idea much thought to the two professing their love for each
other. And there is the real crux of the main problem in this story. It often
felt incredibly disjointed—as if pieces of the story were either in the wrong
place in the timeline or just thrown in for the sake of building conflict or
drama. In particular the last third of this novel seemed to exist just to
finally move the plot on to focus on the mystery element that was broadly
hinted at but never really addressed in the first two thirds of the story.
Something Wild had
all the pieces in place to be an entertaining mystery with a side dish of
romance thrown in. But instead I felt I got a tepid attraction between the two
main characters and a rather oversimplified resolution to the larger issue that
threatened the dinosaurs. Mostly though my real problem with this story was the
idea that major plot pieces were often “told” to us rather than shown. This
meant that many opportunities to flesh out characters and/or the storyline
itself never happened leaving me with a feeling that I had missed something
along the way. Please know I love this author and have enjoyed many really
great books by her but this one fell short of her usual superior storytelling
abilities.
Author Bio
Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theater (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), going to visit friends in other countries, and reading anything thatÃs put under her nose.
Anna claims her entire career is due to the love, support, prereading, and creative ass kicking provided by her best friend Jennifer. Jennifer refuses to accept responsibility for anything Anna has written.
https://www.annamartin-fiction.com/
http://www.facebook.com/annamartinfiction
http://www.pinterest.com/annamartinficti/
http://instagram.com/missannamartin
http://www.twitter.com/missannamartin
 |
| Hosted By Signal Boost Promotions |
No comments:
Post a Comment