Title:  Thrill Of The Chase
Series:  City Shifters The Pride #1
Author:  Layla Nash
Published:  September 4, 2015
My Rating:  4.5 stars
Source:  Borrowed with Kindle Unlimited
Cover Description:

Up-and-coming chef Natalia Spencer has enough on her plate dealing with a struggling restaurant and a corrupt manager selling her out of pantry and kitchen. She doesn’t have time for arrogant customers, even a gorgeous corporate raider in a bespoke suit with muscles that just don’t stop. Until, of course, he buys her restaurant and saves her life.

Logan Chase, alpha of his lion shifter pride, is intrigued when the feisty chef kicks him out of her restaurant. He’s enraged when someone attacks her. And he’s intoxicated when he finally gets close enough to kiss her. But when he shifts in front of her and his lion comes out to play, he risks losing Natalia forever.

Natalia just wants to cook and snuggle with a nice guy. Shacking up with a man who’s also a lion means inviting a new level of crazy into her life, along with his unruly brothers, and even her werewolf best friends warn her away. Can she and Logan create a steamy relationship from scratch, or are they a recipe for disaster?

 Sexy shifters and their feisty mates who aren’t shy about loving each other – so, this is an adult, 18+ reader tale.

You gotta love a woman who takes no crap from anyone, especially an obviously wealthy, powerful, sexy man who returns a perfectly cooked steak to the kitchen numerous times.  So, Natalia does the only thing a self-respecting chef can do – she kicks him out of the restaurant.  Logan is incredulous, his brothers, who were around the table with him, think it’s hilarious.. but Natalia will not serve this arrogant jerk one more thing.  She’s done.  And so is he.

Then he goes and buys the restaurant, puts Natalia in charge — what’s a girl supposed to do with a guy like that?  She’s not exactly sure, but knowing that food is going missing from the pantry, the quality of the food delivered is disgusting and there is just something really bad going on – it’s not a bad thing to have someone powerful to deal with what’s happening behind the scene.

Things heat up when Natalia makes a frightening discovery hidden in that nasty delivered food.  And when she is attacked by her main suspect in all of these shenanigans, heads are gonna roll.  That’s when Logan will step in to defend her and what’s his – the restaurant certainly, but more importantly, his mate.

Thrill of the Chase is the beginning story in an over-arching set of series, City Shifters – The Pride and City Shifters, The Den.  I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating.  Secondary characters, especially when they will become main characters in future stories are so very important to how I will accept an author’s world building.  The main couple, no matter how awesome they may be, do not live in a vacuum.

Layla Nash has given us some amazingly intense, interesting and just plain engaging secondary characters in Thrill of the Chase.  Now, I power read both of these series before I started writing up the reviews.  That’s pretty telling to me that I would rather immerse myself in this world, book after book, than take a break to write up what I thought of the stories immediately.

Logan and Natalia are an intense couple.  You have two powerful (in their own worlds) people who each think that they are right – always.  Stubborn is a word that could be overused to describe them, but it certainly is true.  Logan will do some stupid stuff.  He’s a guy, he’s an Alpha – come on, it’s a given that he’s gonna mess up.  How he fixes those things is a better indication of what type of man he is.  Now, to be fair, Natalia is not without her faults.  Yet she comes to her senses, eventually – once she feels Logan has suffered enough.  (You go girl)

I really enjoyed Thrill of the Chase, and I believe you would too.  Be ready for some pretty nasty bad guys, enemies who are more friend than not, some super sizzling sexy times, a solid story and a main couple you’ll want for your own best friends.  What’s not to like about that?

Available for the Kindle