BUCK NAKED – Evangeline Anderson
Cougarville , Book 1
Macmillan
ISBN-13:  978-1-250-14204-7
April 2017
Paranormal Romance

Cougarville, North Carolina- Present Day

Sadie Becker has just moved to Cougarville from Tampa, Florida, after her ex divorced her and immediately started flaunting his younger girlfriend around town.  Sadie is just turning 40 along with her twin sister Samantha, who is a trauma surgeon back in Tampa.  But something is happening to Sadie; her breasts are perkier and firmer, the stretch marks and pooch on her stomach from having her twins twenty years ago have gone, and her hair is even getting darker!  Plus her ass and thighs are cellulite free.  What in the world is happening, did moving away from her ex cause this?  She is looking at the changes in her body on a full length mirror by the window when she hears a noise and looks out the window and sees her surly neighbor, Mathis Blackwell, with a surprised expression on his face.  Sadie lives ten miles from town in a cabin she never knew about that her mother had left her in her will.  At least Sadie has someplace to go to after the awful divorce.  Mathis is her only neighbor, and she must have scared him plenty.  Mathis has wild, tangled hair, a beard, and shoulders so broad she's never seen one like this before.  But his grunts at their greeting earlier assured her he wasn't interested in her at all and considered her living by him a bother.

Mathis is an Irish buck shifter, his type descended from the Paleolithic Era.  He doesn't know why the image of his neighbor won't go away, maybe she was a plant by Liam Keller to run him out of town?  It's especially disturbing to him as it is rutting season, and the pills from the pharmacist to help him avoid it just don't seem to be working.  Mathis had been married ten years ago to Kathleen, but she died, and he hasn't been with a woman since.  When shifters mate, it's for life, and he doesn't think he could ever love anyone else, despite what the pharmacist/medicine woman says, that because their mating was of such a short duration he could probably mate again, but he's having none of that.  If only Sadie wasn't a “Juvie”.

Sadie has rented an office to set up her accounting business, but every time she goes out everyone sniffs her, and the women tell her to take her “Juvie” self out of town, and the men stare at her as if in a trance and try to take her in the middle of the grocery store.  The fight she started there had her kicked out of the store without her groceries.  Why are they calling her “Juvie”?  Sadie soon finds out a gene in her body has awakened, and her body is trying to become a shifter.  Apparently that is called “rejuvenation” or she is a “Juvie”.  This change makes her emit a smell that drives men crazy, and makes her super fertile.  No matter what Mathis tries to do, he can't avoid Sadie, especially when she is getting in trouble all over town with her super sexual smell . . .

Evangeline Anderson has two wounded characters, Sadie from being divorced and cast aside for someone else, and Mathis, dealing with a mate dead for ten years, and trying to keep his promise to himself to never have a woman again.  But Sadie's change is making her body do strange things, and her smell is slowing driving Mathis crazy.  Can they each deal with the changes in their lives?

Secondary characters are Liam Keller, the cougar alpha who wants to annex Mathis's land which borders their hunting grounds.  Did Liam plant Sadie to distract Mathis?  Fiona ShadowTree is the resident pharmacist who knows much about what Sadie is going through, and what will happen if she doesn't mate under the next full moon, which is close upon them.  Even Sadie's twin Samantha comes to town, unbelieving of Sadie's story; how could one twin change and not the other?

BUCK NAKED is a shifter story with many elements different from other, similar, stories.  Sadie is trying to fit in, but with her smells, nobody but the men want her around.  Mathis is trying his best to resist Sadie, but the inner Buck is having none of that.

Next will be COUGAR BAIT (June 2017) featuring Sadie's sister, Samantha, and Liam Keller, the cougar shifter alpha and Mathis's enemy.  Different basics of the shifter experience are in BUCK NAKED, and will open your eyes to a different side of the shifter lifestyle.

Carolyn Crisher