I want to start out by saying that I adore Christine Feehan.  I’ve read a large portion of her Dark Series as well as several books from her Drake Sisters and GhostWalkers series.  That said, I’m not so sure about the Leopard Series.  Granted, I’m only a few chapters into Burning Wild, the 3rd in the series.  And perhaps I should have started with The Awakening, which was the first book, but the guy on the cover of Burning Wild reminded me of Ben Browder. (In my book, you don’t get much hotter than Ben) So I dove into book three. Well, more like waded.

Normally, when I crack open the cover of a Christine Feehan book I’m hooked, reluctant to put it down until I get to the final word.  For some reason this one hasn’t grabbed me like that.  Instead of immediately falling in love with the characters, I’m sadly disconnected from them in this book and I’m not exactly sure why.  Is the idea of a hero that truly is an animal too much to take?  Am I finding the heroine a little too human and thus wimpy? I’m not exactly sure. Even trying to picture Jake Bannaconni looking like my beloved Ben has done nothing to endear him to me.

Now it’s entirely possible that by the time I reach the end of the book I’ll be wanting a ‘Leopard’ man of my very own. I mean, The Lord of the Rings started so slow I almost stopped reading it and now it’s my favorite book of all time.  But right now I’m not impressed with the cold, calculating hero who spends his nights as a big cat or the quiet, sweet widow of a heroine.

In fact, I’m finding myself tempted to put Burning Wild aside to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the movie releases.  And it doesn’t even have sex scenes.