Novel Review: Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson, #3) by Patricia Briggs

Genre: Adult Fantasy/Supernatural (Light-Romance)

Rating (Out of 5): ~4-4.5

Publisher: Penguin (Ace)

Spoilers?: Minor.

Buy it here: Amazon.

Goodreads Synopsis:

I could smell her fear, and it satisfied something deep inside me that had been writhing under her cool, superior gaze. I curled my upper lip so she could get a good look at my sharp teeth. I might only weigh thirty or so pounds in my coyote shape, but I was a predator...

Mechanic Mercy Thompson can shift her shape - but not her loyalty. When her former boss and mentor is arrested for murder and left to rot behind bars by his own kind, it's up to Mercy to clear his name, whether he wants her to or not.

Mercy's loyalty is under pressure from other directions, too. Werewolves are not known for their patience, and if Mercy can't decide between the two she cares for, Sam and Adam may make the choice for her...

Something Specific:

 Quotes:

• "If there was one thing I'd learned over the past few interesting months, it was that when things started to get dangerous, it was important to have people who knew as much as you did. That way, when I stupidly got myself killed--someone would have  starting place to look for my murderer." (Paperback, pg. 141) I liked this thought. It's something Mercy has followed since, I think, the beginning of the series, and it's something that more characters should do.
• "...but he was one of those 'everything in its place and a place for everything' kind of people." (Paperback, pg. 109) I just liked the sound of that.
• "'You need to choose,' he told me intently. 'Adam or Samuel or neither. But you can't keep them dangling.'" (Paperback, pg. 4) I liked that he mentioned the choice of neither, because that thought is often left out. It's not really mentioned later, and it's obviously not a choice for her, because we all know who she really wants, but the thought is usually not even brought up, let alone chosen. 

Review: 

I really enjoy this series. I like every book, always want to start the next one immediately after finishing each book.

This book… this one was a bit of a surprise, in how bad the contents were to the characters. Something very dark and horrible happened in this book.

I don’t want to spoil it, but it was bad, and rather unexpected. I like Mercy, and I feel really bad for her, and am really interested in finding out what’s going to happen to her next. How badly this is going to scar her in the long term. It definitely scarred her in the short term.

While I do understand how horrible what happened was, and I do understand how badly it affected Mercy and the people around her, I feel like the actual events didn’t affect me, as the reader, as much as they could have. And I think part of that is because of how little description there was of the actual events. I think Mercy was trying not to pay too much attention to it, and she was trying to distance herself from it, but I think it distanced the reader and the effect on me because of it. Also, later on, when she was trying to hide and was listening to the conversations the people around her were having, it just didn’t seem like I was inside her head and feeling the pain she was feeling, but instead that I was getting an overhead view of it all. And I just… I wanted to feel more emotion than that.

Even saying that, I did really like this book, and I was interested in what was happening to her, and really want to read the next book.

Aside from the big event, some stuff did happen between Mercy and her two boys. Things between her and Sam come to a conclusion, which I was a little surprised by but did like, and so things with her and Adam are able to fully start. I liked the moments between her and him in this book, and am looking forward to seeing what develops between them in the next book. As well as seeing her and his daughter, Jesse, get closer. Also, how the other wolves will react around her, if they react differently.

There was also some fae business, and a problem with her friend/fellow mechanic Zee, and a problem with Jesse, and we got some insight into who Ben is, some of it entwined with the Big Problem, which was interesting, but wasn't as big of a problem or as attention getting as the Big Problem.

I’m just generally looking forward to the next book.