The Reluctant Alpha (West Coast Wolves, #1) By Susi Hawke

“As much as I felt bad for this Elisha person—God, my heart was breaking for the young man and all he'd been through—I was also angry. I'd left that pack in my rearview ten years ago for a good reason.”

Matthias Longclaw is happy living his life on the back of his beloved Harley with his five best friends and brothers-in-arms at his side. The West Coast Wolves are a rare pack of alphas, made up of unwanted orphans and second-born sons. The packs they were born to may not have wanted them, but they’ve built a solid family of their own. They help where they can, doing random acts of kindness and expecting nothing in return, just helping to build a world they want to live in.

Then Matt gets a call from an old childhood buddy. He’s being called back—begged to return—to reclaim his birthright and save a life in the process. The problem is… to do it, he will have to take a mate. And if he refuses? The omega will die.

Torn between his duty to help others and his resentment of his old pack, Matt never expects for Elisha Whitetail to tilt his world and change everything. Can Matt and Elisha rebuild a broken pack while tending to a new love and a growing family while dealing with outside threats from neighboring packs?

They’re wolves. Strong, proud, and willing to do what it takes when their community needs them… whatever it takes.

This is the first in a new mpreg series about finding joy in a hard world, building family, and discovering that life can surprise a person when they least expect it. Although this world has harsher themes than my previous books, it still has the same heart you’d expect. Plus a dose of my irreverent humor and all the naughty, knotty heat that comes with true mates. It wouldn’t be a Susi Hawke book without it. Be sure to read the author's note at the beginning for possible trigger warnings.
The Reluctant Alpha (West Coast Wolves, #1)

Susi Hawke ´ 7 FREE DOWNLOAD

This story was filled with irrelevant senseless rambling and made the story so not likable.... the plot was good but all the irrelevant rambling made me not able to enjoy the book enough to even finish it...
I felt like someone was telling me a story and not getting to the point... English If you really concentrate you can feel me cringing from a mile away English Estuvo bien.
Algunas cosas pasaban muy rápido y otras muy lento. Me dió la sensación de que la autora se perdía cuando escribía😂

Elisha y Matt fueron interesantes pero lo que más llamó mi atención fue el grupo de alfas de Matt😅 English The victim was raped for months, got pregnant, was scared for his life and his pup's, was abondaned by his father, was suffering for a long time, mentally and physically, traumatized!! Yet, he woke up, after being raped, by another man, a stranger, because fu***ing someone while he's delirious, in so much pain and pregnant 😳 is rape, even if it's to save the victim's life, hell what premise is this !!! Anyway, he wakes up, the so called victim, all cutesy and flirty, and thinking about heavenly sex !! what!! No psychological devastation, no reprecussions, no anger, nothing!! The author just shrug it off... the victim was up and healthy after a few hours sleep,... how? and soooo freaking intimate with his so called perfect angelic mate : the raper!
The rape never was discussed, the victim psychology never tackled.. this book really rubbed me the wrong way... English I’m not going to rate it since I stopped at 37% mark. English

This was insulting.
So the summary promised an Alpha Wolf MC and what I got was h/c mpreg with an abused Omega from an author who doesn't know the difference between rape and dubcon and can't write about either without ending up titilation territory.
I still don't know when or why the M/M Romance author community decided that the only reason to have a/b/o was to get a guy pregnant and to make Omegas second class citizens that need to be rescued by an alpha. It's a good trope, don't get me wrong, but it's not the only one out there and I wanted the story the summary suggested.
There's a huge infodump in the beginning to establish the worldbuilding and the further into the book you get the more you understand why all of that pesky info needed to get out of the way at the beginning. The dialogue between characters takes over infodumping duty for the rest of the book which unfortunately means that nobody ever comes close to sounding like an actual person.
That's ok though because the author seems to never have intended to write about actual people anyway. It's one thing to have your main characters be kind of ruled by instincts - it's actually the thing that makes a/b/o interesting! It's another to have them be nothing but walking tropes.
The insulting part  was the author trying to have her cake and eat it too when it came to the darker themes. I LOVE me some dark themes. The darker the better actually. So I'm absolutely the right reader for this content. It also means that I know when it is written by someone who has spent at least a minute thinking about the implications. Listen, either have your dubcon be dubcon or don't have it in there. It's actually worse to have your main character essentially be a rapist (remember dubcon does not exist outside of fic) and try to justify it to himself and thus the reader than just have him go through with it. And no having the victim give enthusiastic consent after the fact is even more stupid since you just finished establishing him as having been systematically raped and abused for the past six months. 

The author herself states that she usually writes fluffier stuff and clearly decided to take a walk on the titilating dark side here. Well, she utterly failed and I don't think I'll be interested in anything more from her. English The Reluctant Alpha
By Susi Hawke

Rather than fight his father to the death to become Alpha of his pack Matthias leaves the pack and forms a MC called the West Coast Wolves with four other Alphas. When an old friend calls and asks him to come home to take over the pack and save the life of his Uncle's mate he arrives to discover the Omega his Uncle kidnapped and forced to mate and impregnate him is actually Matthias's true mate.

I very much enjoyed this book. All of the MC's are very likable and relatable. I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in this series. English This was ok.

I mean it's not really anything special.
The dialogue was a bit stilted and weird at times.

I would have liked to see more of the alphas together first, because that would have been interesting. How alphas live and travel together. That and being best friends.

Maybe the next books are better? I'm intrigued about the other alphas and how they would find their omegas. English What a treat!

It's been too long since I've done a Susi Hawke omegaverse romance. I love the way she sets up the first novels in her series for upcoming episodes. The introduction of Eli's two younger omega brothers, and knowing all Matt's Alpha buddies are going to get packs of their own, I am so looking forward to getting their stories.

Nick J. Russo narrates this one and his style is the perfect match for Susi Hawke's brand of romance. He makes the cutest voices for the young wolves, and I don't have to tell his fans how wonderfully he performs the romantic scenes.

100% pure enjoyment!

an audiobook copy of The Reluctant Alpha was provided to me for the purpose of my honest review English This was a good opener to this new series from Susi Hawke although I thought more would focus on the oddness of having a 'pack' of five alphas than happened.

That aside, it's a decent paced omegaverse shifter story with some really loveable characters who are seriously sweet, like Eli, and powerful and protective alphas like Matt.

I'm looking forward to finding out more about the other four alphas and seeing how the various packs all get on with their new leaders in place.

#ARC kindly received from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review. English