Second Nature by Jae

Second Nature by Jae

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Four years ago I read this book for the first time. And now, seemingly randomly, I decided to reread this specific book (then proceed to read everything up to but not including the ‘True Nature’ book and spin-off short stories). Which reminds me – the short stories I read were great but . . . you really need to read Second Nature to be able to fully appreciate those short stories.

So, Second Nature. Second Nature contains multiple point of views, though the main characters, the two most important, are Jorie Price and Griffin Westmore. Jorie is 100% American, though has Asian features (she was adopted by her American parents when she was 3); while Griffin is . . . different. Jorie is a novelist, ‘famous’ for some books that cross over to several different genres, while still including heterosexual characters, though her latest book, still in the writing stage, involves lesbians. Which is where Griffin and the rest come in. See, Jorie works with a beta reader (at least more than one, though it is unclear if this current book only involve Ally or others as well), and that beta reader has noticed certain things in the chapters she has read that has lead her to report the issue to ‘the Council’.

The ‘things’ spotted? Well: 1) book involves shifters; 2) there are a bunch of shifter books out there so, why is it an issue?; 3) the story, characters, description of ‘everything’ seems really spot on to the ‘real world’ of the Wrasa – the world of the shifters. For you see, there’s this group of people who live alongside humans (well on the same planet) who just so happen to be a separate species. One of their forms, though, is close enough to human to pass. The shifters ‘shift’ from one form to another, two forms, human like and some animal like creature that usually gets ‘seen’ as something namable by humans (as in, a shifter who shifts into a bear like animal isn’t really shifting into a bear, but the creature is close enough to a bear to be seen that way (not werebear, but Maki). Oh, and they are not ‘were-something’, they are shifters – they are not humans who have been cursed, bitten, or whatever, they are a separate species.

Right, got distracted there.

Jorie’s book is problematic. How’d she get that information? What’s going on here? Is someone telling her things, is there a traitor Wrasa? The Saru, those people who operate as the Wrasa law enforcement officers, send two people to investigate. Cedric Jennings, a Syak (what humans would see as a werewolf), and Griffin Westmore (an Antapi – which literally means ‘both’, or hybrid, Griffin is half Kasari (which correspond to ‘lions’), and half Puwar (corresponds to tigers). Cedric has been tasked to investigate Ally, the beta reader, while Griffin investigates Jorie. Their task is to find the traitor feeding information to Jorie (she just knows too much for there not to be a traitor).

Certain problems pop up along the way. Like the part where Griffin’s nature, half-Puwar, and half-Kasari, cause issues for her (both in that other Wrasa see her as lessor (or, at least, Griffin sees them seeing her that way), though more in terms of the fact that Kasari are very big on families and living in prides, while Puwar are much more solo-type cats (think real-life lions vs. real life tigers). Mostly, though, the problem is that both Jorie and Griffin end up finding the other quite . . . attractive.

Great, outstanding book. Better read in book form than in dribblings in my review. So I’ll stop that now.

Rating: 5+

July 28 2017



View all my reviews