I went back and forth on writing about this one. It’s very short—a novella rather than a full-fledged novel—and it’s very spare with its details. There are whole swaths of plot that get skimmed right over.
And yet. It’s a screwball comedy-romance/parody/homage to His Girl Friday—with shifters. Not your usual apex predators, either. A meerkat!
It’s also, when I read it as a writer and a teacher of writing, a low-key master class in implied worldbuilding. It is, in short, much more than the sum of its parts.
On the surface, it’s a takeoff on those wonderful Forties comedies, specifically the one with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and the competition between reporters to get the latest and biggest scoop. Would-be journalist Jasmine is stalking a political candidate with a mysterious past. Just as she’s about to get the scoop, up pops infamous paparazzi Chance, as he has all too often before, stealing her thunder.
But this time is different. Just how different, we quickly find out. In very short order, Jasmine and Chance are partners on a story for a big-time publication in Los Angeles, investigating one of the candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles.
And then it gets hilariously weird. Chance, it turns out, is a shapeshifter, and his shifter form is a meerkat. But! Jasmine barely blinks. Jasmine is a shfiter too, and not just any kind of shifter. She’s a cheetah. As for the mayoral candidate, let’s just say (which in fact Silver does) he and his whole gang of legal partners are sorted to Slytherin, and he’s the king cobra.
All of this serves as excuse for Jasmine to rescue the poor wounded little meerkat (whom she does not yet recognize as her rival/partner) and take him home. Where, after she’s nurtured and bandaged and fed him and gone to sleep with him in her bed, he turns back into a human. A naked human with no clothes anywhere within miles of her apartment.
This presents as hot romance, so the inevitable happens. Which in the case of the shifter universe, means not just surprisingly sweet and wholesome if explicit sex, but also the revelation that Jasmine and Chance are destined mates. It’s a terribly mixed marriage between a large apex predator and a cute little furry thing that Jasmine at first mistakes for a ferret.
And yet, as Chance points out, meerkats are predators, too. They evolved to kill vipers—and that’s exactly what they’re facing in their investigation. In human form, they’re physically and sexually compatible, and emotionally they get there, with rapid-fire banter and bickering that turns into passion. In animal form, they hunt together really well, complementing each other’s skills and physical powers.
It’s hilarious and the banter is spot on. The story focuses tightly on the relationship between Jasmine and Chance, interleaved with the political plot. Larger issues of worldbuilding turn up but unless they’re directly relevant to the romance and the reportage, they stay well in the background.
In a novel, we’d get all that. More politics. More workplace drama. And definitely more family drama.
Jasmine comes from a tiny family of cheetahs: grandmother, mother, self. She’s expected to find a nice big-cat shifter boy and settle down. Chance comes from a whole warren of Midwestern meerkats. His family is huge. His horde of relatives are at him constantly to find a nice meerkat girl and settle into a nice burrow and make lots of litters of little meerkat shifters.
The big wrinkle in the shifter family drama is that mates are destined, and it’s extremely clear when it happens. They become mutually telepathic. Chance is all for it; he’s in love and lust with the cheetah, and if anything more so with the very curvy human woman.
Jasmine isn’t quite so into it. She’s happily in lust with the lovely golden man and the adorable little furry critter. But she’s not ready to settle down and the telepathic part makes her extremely uncomfortable. It is possible to wall that off, and it is also possible to string out the mating urge until it dissipates, which is what she tries to do.
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This is a romance, however, and love will not be denied. They’re well matched as investigative reporters, with her writing skills and his photographic talents. They’re madly in love with each other’s bodies and they downright live for the sparks that fly between them.
All of the family drama condenses into a few well-chosen lines. We get a concise but clear picture of both of their families. We see exactly how the shift works for each of them: Jasmine focusing on the hunt and the prey, Chance on the intense curiosity that defines a meerkat.
And then there’s what Chance does to shift back to human. All he has to do is think about social media, and pop! he’s a man.
This is a delightful liqueur of a shifter romance. Distilled to its essence, with distinct notes of the world it’s built in. It’s sweet, spicy, and wickedly intoxicating.
And seriously. Meerkats. In among all the wolves and dragons and tigers and jaguars and mountain lions and bears of all sorts and ssssssnakes, Chance manages to hold his own. And he gets the beautiful big spotty girl.
Judith Tarr is a lifelong horse person. She supports her habit by writing works of fantasy and science fiction as well as historical novels, many of which have been published as ebooks. She’s written a primer for writers who want to write about horses: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. She lives near Tucson, Arizona with a herd of Lipizzans, a clowder of cats, and a blue-eyed dog.
