Trigger warning: Clowns. I know this is a major trigger for some folks and something you should be aware of right up front, because the clown in this story is the physical manifestation of a literal nightmare which terrorised the heroine and almost kills both her and the hero. If that's too much clowning around for you, give this one a miss.
Horrifying clowns aside, this is a good addition to Paige Tyler's Special Wolf Alpha Team (yes, SWAT). Although it's several books into the series, about all you need to know is that the Dallas SWAT team is made up of werewolves, and they're not the only mythical creatures who are real in this fictional version of our world.
Heroine Rachel was a cop who survived an attack which would have killed her if she hadn't carried the recessive werewolf genes. Joining the Dallas SWAT team, she's carved out a place for herself, but she's haunted by ever more horrifying hallucinations of her attacker.
Knox used to be on the wrong side… until he took a bullet meant for Rachel and discovered he was one of the werewolves he was meant to be hunting. Between this and the Horror Clown thing, you'd think that would be enough obstacles, but no… people are trying to kill them in their day jobs as well, and the action just never lets up.
There's A Lot going on here, maybe a bit too much, as though I'm quite happy to accept werewolves and nightmares come to life in my fictional worlds, I do still expect it all to hang logically together and there was stuff that really didn't. (Why did the monster forget about Hannah, the victim before Rachel? Why skip thousands of viable, closer targets to hunt down Rachel specifically?) Having a contact who could all too conveniently identify the monster and tell them how to kill it took away a lot of the suspense, too, and felt like a deus ex machina. I'd much rather Rachel and Knox had to figure it out themselves.
I do like this series, but the author got a bit too caught up with different plotlines going on here, and we really needed more dramatic tension and less description of every bit of food everyone put in their mouths. Three stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book via NetGalley.