The Beast of Wheeler Ridge by Chris H Stevenson is a paranormal/sci-fi romance that is packed with savage attacks, bear traps, forest fires, and mystery. Centered around a man who will do anything to protect a woman with a rare condition that appears outside of his home one day, you’ll see just how far this man is willing to go.

Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my rating in any way.

This is a story about a DNA cloning experiment that had gone wrong. Instead of cloning just a breed of wolf that had previously gone extinct, this scientist wound up with a giant wolf, a hybrid human/wolf, and something else…

All of the creations have been locked away in a bunker. Each raised by the scientist. One day, one of the creations escapes. While they are distracted trying to find the first escapee, another, much more dangerous creation also escapes…

Meanwhile, a forest ranger hears something rustling outside of his home. He goes out and when he sees eyes reflecting back at him, he shoots and the thing falls to the ground. When he gets closer to see what he had hit, he realizes that it’s a woman, but she’s covered in hair. He bring her up into his home so she can recover from the wax bullet he hit her with.

When she comes to, the two of them quickly become acquainted. He believes that she has Hypertrichosis, otherwise known as “Werewolf Syndrome.” Before he knows it, he’s helping her with her “maintenance,” and the two become closer and closer every day that they spend together. Little does this forest ranger know, there’s a lot more to this mysterious woman’s story. And he’s about to find out that he’s in a very dangerous predicament.

I really enjoyed that this book began with a chapter all about something fleeing through the woods. It was clear that something was very wrong, but as a reader, you didn’t know what just yet.

Overall, I really enjoyed how the facts were given to the readers slowly. It was interesting to see how little the wolf/human hybrid actually knew about herself.

The DNA project itself was my main interest and I couldn’t wait to learn more on that front! The action was also very well done. The chase scenes and the dashes of violence were my favorite elements of the book by far!

Beware, the negatives
As the novel mainly centered around the romance, it wasn’t a huge hit for me, personally. **UPDATED TO REMOVE COMMENT THAT WAS PREVIOUSLY HERE – The author commented that this bit will be changed**

However, I will say that the chapter where they go shopping was adorable. I loved that Seth thought about feminine hygiene products. I also really loved how protective he was of her overall.

**UPDATED TO REMOVE COMMENT THAT WAS PREVIOUSLY HERE – The author let me know that this was likely just my version that had some errors with the Kindle formatting

My Final Thoughts
When I finished reading this book, I can definitely say that I enjoyed my time reading it and I would recommend it to others. I loved the mystery and the action! The characters were well-developed and interesting. But unfortunately, as the novel mainly centered around the paranormal romance, it just wasn’t a huge hit for me personally. Check out the review from Kaye on Goodreads to get another opinion!

If you enjoy paranormal romances filled with action and nervous anticipation of what would happen next, I would highly recommend this one to you!