Thunderstruck by Wren Michaels

Reseda Juarez is dead.

Though she functions as a human, inside she's an emotionless weapon, trapped between the living and the undead. Cold and unrelenting, she's used as a super-soldier by the government in a special task force to hunt preternatural beings to the brink of extinction.

One night, five years ago, Kane killed an innocent and his brother lost the love of his life. The aftermath forces Kane to become the alpha of the legendary Thunderbirds. He now must protect what's left of his family from the tribe of wolf shifters who ripped them apart.

When Reseda's mother is bitten by a wolf, she and Kane are forced to work together to find the Mayan Pul Yah stone to heal her—the same stone that gifted Reseda to the life she now lives. But the journey is riddled with more than the wolves, also searching for the stone.

Something strange happens to their powers when they're together, and they struggle to fight the intense attraction between them. The deeper they go, the more secrets unravel, until love is the only thing that can defeat an enemy no one saw coming.

 

Thunderstruck (Thunderbird Brotherhood, book one) by Wren Michaels

Start date: March 15, 2022

End date: March 21, 2022

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 stars

Content warning: brainwashing, racism

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

There’s obviously a large amount of suspension of disbelief in stories involving paranormal and supernatural creatures. I’m used to starting a story by assuming magic is real and that supernatural beings live alongside humans. In Thunderstruck, I kept finding myself taken out of the story.

Shapeshifted by Cassie Alexander

 

Nurse Edie Spence is once again called upon to save a life...and this time, it's personal. Can her new community of zombies, vampires, and shapeshifters come to her rescue when she needs them most?

When Edie was fired from her paranormal nursing job at County Hospital, her whole world came crashing down. Now she is once again shaken to her core. Her mother is deathly ill and there’s only one thing that will save her: vampire blood. But with the paranormal community shunning Edie, where can she find it…without losing her own life in the process?

Edie hopes to procure it at her new job at the clinic across town, where the forces of evil loom large. Vampire gang wars are rampant. Old underground enemies are rising to the surface. And Eide’s zombie ex-boyfriend has arrived at the scene—but is he the same man he used to be? And what should she make of the enigmatic doctor with whom she shares an unexpected connection? She’ll have to figure it out soon, because all hell is about to break loose—literally—and time is running out…

 

Shapeshifted (Edie Spence, book three) by Cassie Alexander

Start date: November 17, 2021

End date: November 19, 2021

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 stars

Trigger warning: gang violence

Each novel gets better as the series progresses.

Shapeshifted picks up a little bit after Moonshifted left off. After Edie was shunned, she lost her job at County Hospital, meaning the protection that the Shadows gave to Jake, her brother, was gone. He’s back on drugs, and Edie is back to worrying if he’ll overdose and die in a ditch somewhere. She’s working overnights at a sleep clinic now. Not only would her previous job have no record of her working there (so Edie has a gap in her résumé), but none of her coworkers remember her either (so no current references). When Edie runs into her former coworker Gina in town, it becomes obvious the Shadows wiped her memory.

“You don’t remember me?”

She frowned deeply. “No. Should I?”

I blinked. Oh, no. I’d told the Shadows I didn’t want them to change my memories—maybe instead they’d changed everyone else’s?

“I’m sorry—I must have you confused with someone else,” I said. It wasn’t worth Gina wondering who the Shadows had stolen away from her for the rest of her day. I’d been the one to choose remembering. I didn’t think she would have chosen to forget. (Alexander 111)

Moonshifted by Cassie Alexander

 

Check in to County Hospital’s secret ward—where paranormal activities lead to medical emergencies for one tireless nurse…

After surviving a brutal vampire attack, Nurse Edie Spence is ready to get back to work—attending to supernatural creatures in need of medical help. But her nursing skills are put to the test when she witnesses a hit-and-run on her lunch break. The injured pedestrian is not only a werewolf, he’s the pack leader. And now Edie’s stuck in the middle of an all-out were-war…

With two rival packs fighting tooth and nail, Eide has no intention of crossing enemy lines. But when she meets her patient’s nephew—a tattooed werewolf named Lucas with a predatory gleam in his eye that’s hard to resist—Edie can’t help but choose sides. The question is: can she trust this dangerous new ally? And can she trust her own instincts when she’s near him? Either way, Edie can’t seem to pull away—even if getting involved makes her easy prey…

 

Moonshifted (Edie Spence, book two) by Cassie Alexander

Start date: October 9, 2021

End date: October 10, 2021

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 stars

Trigger warning: mutilation

Nurses Edie Spence and Charles witness a hit-and-run accident in front of the hospital they work at. The professionals spring into action to save the life of the middle-aged man quickly bleeding out on the street. It becomes obvious to them that the man is a werewolf but luckily his rescuers work on the supernatural floor of the hospital. What unravels from then is a mystery Edie is forced to solve to save her own life.