Kate Sherwood's Long Shadows

Before venturing into the book review, today has mostly been spent sleeping and playing Elder Scrolls Online.  I am still trying to get a character there up to 50, but it will be a bit.  After leaving the game, I looked around the kitchen for food.  Bachelor food is always interesting, but this wasn't frozen tonight, instead I found tortillas, salsa, maxi-blend cheese, and some bacon that I had already cooked.  Layering tortillas, salsa, chopped bacon, and cheese, then cooking them in the oven to warm everything up, and you have bacon tacos.  Surely not something to win an award, but it was quick and easy.

Anyway, after finishing my snack/dinner, I focused on finishing Kate Sherwood's newest "Long Shadows."  Over on Goodreads I mentioned that it was sort of a book-length prologue for her new series, and I will stick with that description.  She fleshes out the characters, covers a good deal of back story, and creates a current story where these are all explored, while wrapping the book up in a way that is not a cliff-hanger.  Yes, there are unanswered questions, but there need to be in order to set up the series.  Since there is nothing life-threatening left at the end, I don't consider it a cliff-hanger.  For those who like MM Romance, it is a reunion book, but one with no make up sex, even though Jericho and Wade haven't seen each other in fifteen years.  Sometimes a romance is even better when the set up is explored and the relationship is more fully developed, and this is what I think Ms Sherwood is aiming for -- creating a set of characters we like regardless of what happens in the bedroom.  Those two and Kayla (also a childhood friend), now the sheriff, will have an interesting time in the books ahead.  Riptide is the publisher, and while I don't know if they still have all four available as a bundle, I bought the set because I have enjoyed Ms Sherwood's previous work.

One last thing, Kayla is described as having been a tomboy in her youth, and here she is twice divorced, and here I am hoping the Ms Sherwood doesn't make her a lesbian, because a nice non-stereotypical woman in a role of responsibility, that is not a mother, is a nice to see.