Somebunny to Love by Zoe Chant
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Somebunny to Love is book seven of the Virtue Shifters series. It’s also my least favorite of the series. I believe it would be considered a novella.
Emmy is a rabbit shifter. Yes, you read that correctly. I can only think that Chant was desperate to break away from all the were-whatever books. (Shifters in this series aren’t “were” anything. They’re born as shifters and can’t spread that state other than by having children.) Before encountering Sandy in book seven/eight, I’d decided that all shifters must be male in this universe.
Anyway, Emmy is out enjoying a spring day as a rabbit, gets spooked by a fox, and ends up in a humane trap. (Getting spooked is a routine occurrence in Emmy’s life, one of the dangers of being a prey animal that’s afraid of everything.) She has decided that she’s likely to die there when Karl comes along, almost finished with his hike across the country. She’s the biggest, fluffiest bunny he’s ever seen, and absolutely beautiful. He releases her from the trap and is surprised when she doesn’t immediately run away.
Emmy is stunned to meet her sexy fated mate in the woods. She’s too shy to shift in front of him, and he’s obviously just passing through, so she looks at him as long as she dares before hopping away.
Karl decides to head into Virtue to get a shower and spend the night in a hotel. He’s blown away by the beauty of the BBW1big beautiful woman – a woman who is bigger than society expects or wants her to be manning (womaning? personing?) the front desk at the bed and breakfast in town. Emmy is amazed to see Karl again and to learn that he definitely likes what he sees in her. He asks her out and she accepts, deciding to take any time she can get with him before he leaves town.
The couple must overcome their mutual reticence and Karl’s planned return to his life across the country. Emmy has never been outside Virtue’s city limits, so the idea of going with him doesn’t occur to her, even though he is fated to be part of her life.
Two out of five stars. I just couldn’t get past Chant’s decision to make the first female shifter to be featured as part of a couple a prey animal with no defenses. I’m normally tickled to find a BBW as the main character in any book, but meeting her in this situation was problematic.
