I was all set to give this 5 stars but I'm settling in 4.5.

This book was glorious. I zipped through the whole thing in almost a single day.

This was such a lovely exploration of friendship, found family and M/M relationships. I don't have much experience in reading shifter love stories but I found this one to be tender and thoughtful. I loved the relationship between Ox and Joe. There are more books about these guys and I will read them as I am totally invested in this pack now.

I know some readers had an issue with the age difference but it never felt icky to me.

I really loved that pretty much everyone was queer. And it was just normal and fine and casual and not A THING.

There were issues. Ox went from feeling like brother to complete sexual infatuation in one paragraph. We had the relationship already there, but this bit felt rushed.

The ending is kind of where it dropped down that half star for me. The build up of the villain plot was long, and then over very quickly. The language became a bit repetitive. And I did feel the whole thing was a *smidge* too long.

But honestly, I lapped this up.