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Bears Behaving Badly by Maryjanice Davidson
Bears Behaving Badly
BeWere My Heart
Paranormal/Shifter Romance
Sourcebooks Casablanca
March 31st, 2020
ebook, mass market paperback, audiobook
384
These social worker bear shifters give the term "mama bear" a whole new meaning! Bestselling author MaryJanice Davidson is back with this brand-new paranormal romance series featuring a foster care system for at-risk shifter babies and teens.
Werebear shifter Annette Garsea is a caseworker for the Interspecies Placement Agency. When a selectively mute and freakishly strong teen werewolf is put in her custody, Annette has to uncover the young girl's secrets if she's to have any hopes of helping her. And not even the growling of a scruffy private investigator can distract her from her mission...
Bear shifter David Auberon appreciates Annette's work with at-risk teen shifters, but he's not sure if her latest charge is so much a vulnerable teen as a predator who should be locked up. All that changes when he, Annette, and her motley band of juveniles find themselves dodging multiple murder attempts and uncovering a trafficking cartel that doesn't just threaten the kids, but risks discovery of the shifters by the wider world of homo sapiens.
BeWere this book…
Bears Behaving Badly is the first book in the upcoming BeWere My Heart series by Maryjanice Davidson. With more twists and 
turns than an English manor maze, Bears Behaving Badly is so fast-paced, and so cliché-ridden that more times than not it comes off as confused and tiresome.
In a world that is shared between shifters and “stables” or non-shifters, Annette is part of an agency that helps interspecies foster kids. Private investigator David is more than heavily hinted at being her mate, but both Annette and David vehemently deny anything, much to the chagrin of a whole plethora of supporting characters. Annette and David’s relationship is built on banter, reluctant yet mutual admiration, and undeniable chemistry. Unfortunately, the writing is so poorly-executed I was pulled out of the book too much to appreciate the slow-burn of their romance.
The plot is fast-paced, but it moves so quickly that I was left jumping from scene to scene trying to keep up with snarky conversations between the characters. The conversations often felt disjointed to actual plot. Perhaps it was intended, however, it felt sloppy and like too much was trying to be packed into an already overdone novel. Bears Behaving Badly should have been an intriguing murder-mystery. Instead, it is so poorly executed that I actually had to skip to the end to see if it got any better. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
This is a harsh review. Shifter romance is not outside the norm of books that I read, however it has been a while since I have read a shifter book that wasn’t marketed as “spoofy”. This book was not for me. I’ll be honest when I say that I expect better from a traditionally published author with a hefty catalogue. Bears Behaving Badly felt like a poor attempt at meshing humor and drama with shifter romance. There are much better attempts out there. I would recommend that our readers skip this release.
Jes is a self-proclaimed bookworm, who recently moved from the PNW back to the Midwest. When her nose isn’t in a book, she’s spending time with her husband, two kids, and her three fur babies, or exploring the globe. She also firmly believes that you should start the day with coffee, and end the day in bed with a good book.
