Shared by the Bears – Stephanie Brother

3/5 stars

I usually love Stephanie’s work, but I struggled to get into this one.

The frequent callbacks to the original fairytale felt a little unnecessary. I don’t mind some mention, but having the fairytale practically spoon-fed to me made the actual story feel disjointed. As I was getting into the story, there’d be a sort of segue to the fairytale to point out how alike the story was to it.

The relationship between Goldie and her three bears checked all the typical boxes that you would expect but didn’t seem to do much else.  To me, I ran down the checklist of a paranormal shifter romance, but I didn’t get much development or characterization outside of that. I wanted to feel more for the characters and really get behind their relationship instead of ticking off mental boxes. It didn’t feel concrete and deep to me like I wanted it to.

This wasn’t a bad story by any means; it just didn’t blow me away. I think I’ll stick to her other works if anything further comes out in this universe and keep reading my way through her other series.