G. L. Carriger

Alec, marine biologist and werewolf never expected to survive his transformation, but he did. Now he just tries to keep out of the way, since his dad, the packs beta, hates his guts for being gay and intellectual (he's also a smart ass, which doesn't help).
Two merpeople ask the packs help in finding some embezzling selkies and Alec, as the go to ocean-guy is tasked with helping them.

Ok, so this one did not work on any level for me.

The romance went from 0 to moving in together in a day without so much of a proper talk about anything at all.
I could deal with it being fast, if there was any indication of "something". But it's just interest and some kisses, which would be fine and suddenly they apparently plan to move in together.

I just did not get them as a pairing. As a matter of fact, I did not get any personality from Marvin besides flirty and not much from Alec either.
I didn't like Alec much in Sumage Solution and I did not like him any more here. I did not feel the story expanded on his character at all, he's still entirely obscure to me. Hell, Marvins sister Giselle showed more personality then the main characters.

Alecs alpha state and gayness where apparently common knowledge, so his big reveal felt pretty silly and doucy. Also entirely anticlimactic.
The whole story felt entirely lost and confused to me. There wasn't really much going on, the plot line felt just weird and random, even for a short story.

Bryan, called Biff, is beta to an pretty unusual werewolf pack, having a gay, intellectual alpha, a merman alpha-mate and several other gay members. As he's registering his pack for their new location, Bryan hits it of with the mouthy sumage (kinda like a squib for mages) Max, regardless of the fact, that werewolves and mages can't usually stand each other (or smell, from the wolf perspective).

I love this one. I wasn't so sure about it, since I tried one of Carrigers regular novels and wasn't too impressed, but I guess everything that did not work there did work here.

The humor is the same, I always liked her style in that.

The main characters are cute, the banter is a little over the top, but I enjoyed it regardlessly. Sometimes I like it unsubtle. But the characters are well-build with a certain depth to them. The supporting cast is pretty good too, I especially liked the poly Kitsune.

The sex scenes where extensive but not all about the sex, at least most of the time, so that kept it interesting. There was an unexpected amount of angst in there, like sledgehammer to the guts unexpected. Very heart-jerking.
I'd already pecked the book for a very stereotypical romance with not much else going on, but the book quite thoroughly and sneakily proved me wrong. Well done.

I also was really impressed with the amount of world building in this one. I don't usually read about shifters, so I'm not sure how much is original, but I liked the level of detail, I liked how mages where portrait (I'm a sucker for unusual magic systems) and I was impressed how she managed to get so much history and background information into the story without smothering you in exposition or without seeming like that's what's happening at all.

All in all a very addictive book.