Mercy Thompson - Patricia Briggs

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Subgenre: weres, vamps, walkers, an elf or two
Age Appropriate: Mature Older Teen
Recommended for my sister: Yep.

"'I killed a werewolf in my garage.' That will get a quicker response than spending 20 minutes explaining." - Mercy

Mercedes Thompson turns into a coyote. As opposed to werewolves, she's a walker. Her mother love a Native American cowboy and Mercy came of it. Her father died tragically in a car accident shortly and so Mercy ended up with her mother. Until something strange happened, of course. Mercy ended up moving to Montana to be with her werewolf uncle and the Marrok's pack. She grew up and moved out, ended school and became a VW mechanic. That's right, Mercedes the VW mechanic. An old joke made frequently throughout the series.

Mercy has a number of new and interesting friends that either a direct effect in all of the shenanigans, or somehow pulled her butt of out the fire in each. Only Mercy would end up working for a metalsmith gremlin, being courted but the local Alpha, fixing up cars and vampires and wrapped up in Fae affairs. Her mystical abilities make her to focus of interesting people, and often ends up in lot of trouble all the way around. That's the whole basis of her books - watching her get out of these bonkers situations with the help of her unlikely set of friends.

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I have a lot of fun with this series. Of course there is some romance, as with most Urban Fantasy novels (particularly with female authors but it still well away from the Paranormal Romance genre. It's almost like Anite Blake-light. Mercy gets into tons of accidental situations where she has to take on a hero role. The "light" part is that she's no serious vampire hunter with dangerous assassin friends, just werewolves and a strange vampire. It is comparatively lighthearted. Half of the time I'm just shaking my head at how she manages to get into some of these situations. There are some serious parts, though. It's not completely fluffy. In one of the books, there is actually a pretty difficult ending - fair warning. I'm going to recommend it, though. It's good light Urban Fantasy reading. Right now, there are 6 books in the series - which is why I've put in less review. (Anita has about 23 books, hence the longer review.)

I will mention that there is a spin-off series  (Alpha & Omega)with some good friends/family of Mercy & Company. It's definitely more on the romance side of the spectrum, but they're pretty good. If you decide you're going to be adding those in, it might be good to see if Patricia Briggs has a chronological timeline somewhere, as the books are interspersed with the Mercy books.

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Next time!: The Lions of Al-Rassan