Burning Wild by Christine Feehan

This is Christine Feehan at her best. There is an uber-alpha male with paranormal abilities (he's a leopard shape-shifter) and a fast-paced suspenseful plot. Burning Wild is a follow-up to Wild Rain, but they are only loosely connected and you don't need to read Wild Rain first to enjoy this book.

I enjoyed the hero, Jake Bannaconni, very much. He was such an alpha that he's the kind of guy you'd run from in real life, but his personality fit perfectly considering he is a leopard. Everything he did made sense in that context. I liked the heroine, Emma Reynolds, a lot, too. She is stronger than some of Feehan's female characters, and no pushover. My only complaint (and it's slight) is that she seemed a little too good to be true.

This is also a complaint I had about the villains of the story, in reverse. Instead of being too good to be true, they were too bad to be true. But I have to admit I thought they were deliciously evil and didn't have a problem with it while I was reading the book.

This is a long book at 443 pages and it gives Feehan plenty of time to gradually build the relationship between Jake and Emma. It also builds the sexual tension to amazing levels. They don't have sex until halfway through the book, which means we really know and care about them by then. The love scenes are intense and fit the nature of the characters.

I'll rate this book 8.5 out of 10 and I look forward to the next in the series.