Night Broken

Shiny ( )

Every time I think that Mercy and Adam's adventures can't get any better or surprising another book comes to me.

This time we start out with Christy, Adam's manipulative ex-wife, asking to come stay with him because she has a stalker. Mercy is blind-sided by a Gray Lord, Beauclaire, who wants his father's artifact back, The Walking Stick...you know, the one she gifted to Coyote.

At first I was upset with Mercy for not standing her ground, and her place in the pack, with Christy. I mean the woman was pulling out all the stops to make the pack feel for her and put Mercy in the worst light possible. But to keep peace and knowing that she is Adam's true mate gave her some mettle to not let it get to her too much. Think only Adam could sense just how deep the jealously Mercy felt ran. And surprise, surprise....Honey turns out to be one of Mercy's staunchest supporters.

Now Beauclaire seems like an after thought. Does he have anything to do with the main drama. In having to get Walking Stick back she needs to find Coyote, this leads her to a prison where she meets Gary Laughingdog....her brother from another mother. He is not one of Coyote's fans and resent him interfering in his life. He'd rather hide out than deal with Coyote or the "gift" given to him....he has "Seeings".

As always in Mercy's world there is mischief, mayhem and romance....not all involving Mercy this time. Samuel and Ariana make an appearance too. And we find out more about young Mercy and some of the stunts she pulled.

Enjoyed the book but a bit saddened. Now I only have two more books to go before we get a new one and unless that is coming out in the next week or so I shall be suffering withdrawals very shortly.
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I liked this installment in the Mercy Series quite a bit. I like Mercy with Adam and I like Coyote, the pack and Gary with it's complicated politics.
I wish she would soften up on female characters jealousy and odd behavior. The Christy storyline with the interaction between Adam, Mercy and Christy bordering on ridiculous.
Otherwise good. Either write Christy off or have Mercy's responses to her be more realistic. ( )

Oooooo I hope Christy goes away. Don't care how. Evil, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. ( )

Mercy's mate and husband Adam receives a phone call from his ex wife (Christy) begging for help. She has a stalker and he has already killed someone to get her back. Moving back in with Adam and Mercy ends up bringing lingering tension between Mercy and the Pack. Also there is a new enemy that will stop at nothing to get back Christy.

I was waiting to savor "Night Broken" for a weekend when I would have nothing to do but re-read "Frost Burned" and then this novel. This is Patricia Brigg's eight novel in the Mercy Thompson series. Long-time fans know that Patricia Briggs only plans two more novel in this series and though I will be sad to see Mercy go with novels like this one it will be a little easier to take.

Though the character of Mercy has grown and changed since she has been mated to Alpha werewolf Adam a lot of other characters in the series have not. I ended up only giving this novel 3 stars though at times I wavered between 3 and 4 stars. This was due to too many plot points, pacing issues, and a total re-write of certain characters that are in the Pack.

There seemed at times way too much going on in the novel for me to focus on just one thing. For example, the vampires make an appearance and threw a new wrench into Mercy and Stephen's relationship. The plot already had a lot going on with Mercy and the Pack trying to figure out who Christy's stalker is without involving the vampires. I really wish this could have waited for the next novel or just left out all together. I think why it bothered me so much is that we have Adam just shrugging off this new wrinkle and acting like it's no big deal. Yeah the same Adam who about lost it when he thought that Stephen was taking over Mercy's mind in "Bone Crossed." The addition of the fae scrambling around also made it hard to concentrate on the bigger plot which was taking down Christy's stalker.

The pacing was off a bit too. Instead of Mercy and Adam finding out more about Christy's stalker we get an info-dump via a character that really should not have known anything about this person. It would have made better sense if the friends she made around the Columbia River in "River Marked' would have provided this information. Or better yet anyone else. We also get a welcome surprise via Mercy's family and I wish we could have spent more time developing that new person then jumping back and forth among three plot points.

The members of the Pack that are still against Mercy is getting to absurd proportions. I could have sworn in "Frost Burned" that everyone in the Pack had finally accepted Mercy and there was no more of this she's just a coyote and doesn't belong nonsense. However, this novel re-sets all of that and we have Pack members who I could have sworn were all for Mercy (Daryl, Aurielle, and Mary Jo) now siding against Mercy for Christy. There were at least half a dozen times I wanted to slap the fictional character of Christy and it just made no sense to me that werewolves that are trained to spot a lie were letting themselves get manipulated by an ordinary human woman. The ending with Christy and Mercy made me really upset. I can only hope that we don't get a re-hash of this nonsense in the next novel.

Finally, I really loved that Patricia Briggs decided to tell "Frost Burned" from Mercy and Adam's point of views. I really wish she had kept that up for this novel since it would have been nice to see what Adam was thinking about things.

I still recommend and think long time fans will enjoy. ( )