Judith's review of Deceiving the Protector (Resurrection #2) by Dee Tenorio

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Judith's review of Deceiving the Protector (Resurrection #2) by Dee Tenorio.

The mate he never wanted may be the woman he can never have....

After a series of murders is discovered along the trail of the Shifter Underground, wolf soldier Jensen Tate is assigned to find and protect a missing stray. But Lia Crawford doesn't seem to want his protection. When she eludes his watch and returns with mysterious injuries, Tate knows she's hiding something. To discover her secrets, he'll have to win her trust....and get closer to the woman he thinks may be his mate.

Lia has reasons to keep her distance. The killer is haunting her steps, determined to claim her. He will come after them both if he sees how drawn she is to Tate, though it becomes increasingly difficult to deny her attraction to him. Protecting Tate is vital - but will her deception cost her his love?

As creative authors have built the world of the shifter in all its many forms, this alternative universe has not place to go except the future. Not only do we now have the challenge of imagining a world where humans shift into various animal forms, but now we have the challenge of imagining a world where they arre not known and not accepted. The efforts of scientists to experiment on these individuals, without regard to their intrinsic humanity, is the subject of many a paranormal tale. Here the main characters are indeed wolf shifters but both Tate and Lia are under siege. Tate is brother of the Alpha, a man whose ability to track and a better-than-average nose for identifying both friend and foe. Lia is a wolf-shifter on the run but with a unique problem. Taken as a prisoner of government scientists when her family was attacked, Lia endured, using her hatred of her captors to fuel her determination to be free. Buried deep in her memories are the shared days with her baby sister, knowing that her sister's survival, if she is even alive, depends on her own successful escape. What Lia comes face to face with is the government assassin Asher, a shifter that has been so brain washed and physically modified, that he lives to kill and kill his own kind. Yet in the depth of his nearly destroyed soul lives a need for Lia, a conviction that she is his mate, a state Lia refuses to acknowledge and from which she continues to flee.

Now Tate seeks out Lia having been told by a wise woman of his pack that she is a "treasure" that is absolutely necessary for the survival of their species. Their travel together toward the "safe house" connected to the Underground, an organization started by Tate's brother as a means of fighting the government's efforts to wipe out shifters. She rejects his early attempts at communication or even the barest of acquaintance, but what Tate doesn't understand is that Lia knows Asher is always lurking just in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to kill anyone who tries to remove Lia from him. Only as Lia continues to cooperate with Asher is she able to get him to agree not to kill Tate, a shifter she is rapidly coming to realize is her One. The story is wrapped around Lia's efforts to keep Tate alive, even if it means the end of her own life. That Tate is becoming aware of his connection to Lia is the other half of the story and is built on the premise that Tate must not only fight Asher for Lia's life, but Lia herself and her determination to sacrifice herself on his behalf.

This book made me think, and I mean, a lot. I wondered what was really diving this story, and was there a thought that the author was trying to convey with this tale. That's probably a dangerous thing to try to ascertain—who's to know what was in the author's mind. Yet I found this story quite compelling. Obviously it is a story of survival in a world that had become dangerous and hateful. For the shifters it was almost the eleventh hour as the power of the government had been unleashed against them as a species. For Tate is was an exercise in "putting one foot in front of another" as he was about to give up on ever having a love in his life that would sustain and complete him. An earlier experience had jaded his hope and nearly killed his search for his "mate." Meeting Lia put all that early experience once again on the front burner for him, forcing him to make decisions about his future for himself, with her, and whether he was going to allow the hurts and disappointments of the past to continue to rob him of the fulfillment of his dreams.

This story is also about the power of love to sacrifice for the welfare of the loved one. The power of love to enable this kind of sacrifice is now and always has been an awesome thing to me. The Good Booki says: "Greater love has no one than this: that one would lay down one's life for a friend." I think this story is an illustration of that kind of love, a sense of treasuring another to the extent that their survival is more important than one's own survival. As the reader progresses through this novel there is a growing awareness that Lia is certain she will die, and if in that death she can preserve Tate's life, then her death will have a meaning and purpose she feared would be missing. Now even Asher's long oppression which may cause her eventual death may serve some good.

This is not an easy book to read. It took me a while to get into it and I'm not sure why I stayed with the story. Something just kept drawing me forward and looking back on the experience, I can honestly report that it was the writing style, the sense of mystery that surrounded Lia and Asher and their weird connection that seemed to exclude Tate that moved me forward through the story. I knew there had to be a point when the separate strands of their experiences would merge, and I wanted to "be there" when that happened. Somehow the ultimate resolution was worth the wait. I have read this author's work previously , but that is not what made the difference. These characters, the clear delineation of each character's personality and the balance between introspection and narrative all converged to make this a deeply satisfying read. I highly recommend it to those who don't mind the "tussle" of working through a complicated novel. This is really a good one.

I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J's Book Place.

This book is available from Carina Press. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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