STONE COLD FOX – Evangeline Anderson
Cougarville , Book 3
Swerve
ISBN-13:  978-1-250-14206-1
August 2017
Paranormal Romance/Shifters

Cougarville, North Carolina – Present Day

Jo Ferrell is a Third Level Wiccan or witch, and has been running through the woods for several days since she was voted out of her home, Avalon.  With her mentor, Miranda, dead, and Bianca, the next witch in charge, the Council sent her packing with just the tools of her trade and what personal clothing she could carry.  She has been running through the woods and feels a malevolent force running behind her, she can almost feel its hands on her neck, when she comes to a clearing with a house and a shed.  Her powers increase in a place where people dwell, and she makes it to the shed just in time.

Reese Cooper has just returned home when he hears heart wrenching sobbing inside the ramshackle shed in his backyard.  Inside is a young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, who is scared to death when he surprises her.  He had brought home French fries and a bacon cheeseburger because the resident pharmacist-wise woman, Fiona ShadowTree, told him he needed to get home and take care of someone crying in his back garden shed.  All he finds out is she is a witch and scared to death.  She has the ashes of a tree all over her body and a long silver dagger held over her wrist.  When she sees him, her terror grows until Reese turns into his shifter self, a tiny fox about as big as a Chihuahua.  One of the fox shifter abilities is to be as small as a mouse or as big as a bear, but the Chihuahua size seems best at this time.

Sinister forces are after Jo for reasons unknown, and coming to accept Reese as a fox shifter strains her senses to the limit.  At the age of nineteen she was caught by three men and raped for days before leaving her body and finding Miranda, who told police where she was being held.  Jo studied witchcraft with Miranda and took a vow of chastity to the Goddess, and has stayed away from men ever since.

But behind everything is the remembrance of what happened all those years ago, and figures into everything Jo does and feels, keeping her mind in a jail of that long ago terror.  Jo resists listening to anyone about what is happening to her, and tries time and again to leave and get by on her own, but each time she gets deeper and deeper in whatever is going on.  Reese is patient beyond normal with Jo, but begins to think he might have to let her go, and maybe accept her death when she ignores the full moon mating urge that can kill her.

Evangeline Anderson is once again taking us to the city of Cougarville, where women arrive with a latent shifter gene that causes them to rejuvenate.  When the gene starts to activate their hair loses its gray, their wrinkles disappear, and their breasts are perkier than they have ever been. Reese has watched his two best friends meet rejuvenated women or “juvies”, and find the love of their lives.  Despite what Fiona tells Jo, she willfully refuses to believe she is also turning into a shifter, or will at the next full moon.  At that time she must mate with an Alpha shifter and will take on his shifter shape.  Nope, not happening to Jo.

Secondary characters are Fiona and Reese's friends Jase Saunders, a dire wolf Alpha; Liam Keller and Mathis Blackwell.  And the witch Bianca; has she gone over to Dark Witchcraft?

STONE COLD FOX is the third in the Cougarville series, and introduces us to Jo, a strong witch, and now an even stronger witch/shifter, and Reese, a fox who is excited to meet the love of his life.  They have lot of terror to go through and a massive trust in Reese for Jo to accept his love and put her past behind her.  If you like shifters, give STONE COLD FOX a chance this month.

Carolyn Crisher