Rule Breaker by Lora Leigh (Breeds #29)
Paranormal Romance
Released: February 4, 2014
Berkley (Hardcover)

Reviewed by Helyce

I have waited a long time for Rule’s story. As a fan of this series, Rule has been a major part of the cast of characters through the books.  An enforcer for Jonas Wyatt, Breed Director, Rule’s presence has always been felt strongly, so we’ve gotten to know him pretty well along the way.  What we know most about him, though, is that he is not looking for a mate. These are Rule’s rules, taken from the Goodreads blurb:

#1. Never have sex with a woman outside his own subspecies, especially a human woman.

#2. Never, at any time, accept a mission concerning a female when Jonas Wyatt stinks of a lie.

#3. Run don’t walk, skip or stumble. Run, hell for leather away from any female, human or breed, when his desire for her appears, in any way, to have so much as a single sign of Mating Heat.

Rule breaks all those rules this time around when he’s given a task by Jonas and again comes face to face with Gypsy Rum McQuade.  You see, Rule has some history with Gypsy that we never knew about until now. Years before, when Gypsy was just a teen, Jonas and his enforcers had rescued her after she’d been kidnapped by some Council Coyotes.  After watching them kill her brother Mark, they were on the verge of raping her when Rule tore through them and killed every Coyote who was near Gypsy.  Though he remained on the outskirts of the scene, he could not contain his disgust and anger, nearly killing the one Coyote they’d had left to question. Over the years that followed, Rule had watched and kept track of Gypsy from afar, always in the background never being seen. Never realizing exactly who she was to him.

Jonas and his enforcers are now in Window Rock because he is convinced that a contact known only as Whisper is the key to locating a group of Breeds known only as the Unknown.  He believes that this group can help his daughter Amber who was injected with some sort of serum and is slowly dying.  He will stop at nothing to save his daughter and he expects Rule to find this contact so that a cure can be found and she can be saved.

Jonas believes that Gypsy is this contact, but Rule is fighting him on this. While he’s out to prove that Gypsy is not the person they’re looking for, he will continually fight with his inner animal who wants more than anything to claim the woman that Gypsy has become. A fight he’s determined to win.

If you’re a fan of this series, it’s no secret that there have been serious issues with editing over the course of the last several books.  Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment, but I cannot quit this series and when I learned that we were finally getting Rule’s book I was happy to read it. He, along with his brother Lawe have forever run whenever the word “mate” was spoken but since Lawe found his mate a few books ago, it was time for Rule to find his as well.  The mating of the couples of this series has always been very similar.  The Breed and his mate meet, the glands on the tongue swell, sex ensues, they can’t be apart, more sex and a mating.  But in Rule and Gypsy’s case, perhaps because he’d met her when she was still just a teen and no real physical contact had been made, these two remain apart for years before they begin to claim each other.  Rule may not have realized that Gypsy was his mate, but we learn that after the incident where they’d rescued her from the Coyote’s, he’d kept tabs on her, as did Jonas and now years later, the reasons are obvious. Even then, though, for whatever reason, Rule does not experience the usual mating heat symptoms and the road to claiming his mate takes us on a different journey which was a nice change.

Outside of the mating of Rule and Gypsy, however, we are drawn back into the story arc that has been ever present over the course of the last 8 books; that of Jonas trying to find a cure for his daughter Amber. It has always been just out of reach and while I love Jonas to pieces, I was very tired of this story arc and really needed it to come to an end. And finally, it does to a certain extent-though we now have other questions and other characters that we need to know more and more about.

When I sat and thought about how things have kind of come full circle, I realized that what happened to Amber just 8 books ago, had actually started in a chain of events that involved people who were mentioned way back with books 7 and 8. I have to say, that I am impressed by this kind of continuity and that while, yes, I admit that there is so much going on in these books that you really and truly cannot start in the middle or read out of order to totally follow and understand the world that this author has created-there is and has been a method to the madness, so to speak.

And this is why I continue on even with the errors in editing, the often confusing storylines and over long story arcs-because I’m so invested in these characters and at some point I have to trust that all this reading will not have been in vain. We need to know who Cassie is waiting for.  Who is watching her from afar, who is her destined mate. We need to know what the deal is with Gideon-good guy or bad guy? I lean toward good, but why is he in hiding? And Dane, the first Breed hybrid-this guy is all kinds of special and we have not even cracked the surface of all that he is and all that he can do.

So, in spite of the fact that there were parts of this story that confused me and a fair amount of re-reading of passages in order to try and make sense of them, Rule Breaker, was more concise as a whole than some of the books before it.  We get some closure on the Amber situation, though I know that’s not the end of her story. Though subtle, there was a general feel of forward motion in this one. It’s the freaking hints that this author sneaks in, little glimpses of things that she gives us that keep me hanging on, waiting on the next book.

Rating: C+

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