Had to do a lot of skipping once I got over 100 pages in....It just became beyond dull and boring after that point...and I only had just under 93 pages left..so why get that far and give up totally? And skipping, I didn't miss a whole lot that wasn't explained, again, later..smh...The best part of the book was the ending...Which I won't tell but it was worth reading the last 4 pages...sigh..So, that's why it only got a two...well, wait, let me put it like this...it got a 2 because of the ending... ( )

Clay and Elena take the twins to a cabin near Algonquin Park to celebrate Christmas as a family. Unfortunately they discover that there is a mutt wolf living in town and he poses a threat to their family. Elena discovers that there was an accident with a young man and wolves ate parts of him after his death. Elena must work quickly to find out if it was real wolves or if they have a man-eating mutt on their hands.

I just love Clay and Elena and this novella was pretty good.

Clay and Elena are trying to have a normal Christmas with their twins. They run into a problem with a couple of Mutts. How do they handle the mutts and still keep their werewolf secret from their children?

Notes:

Chapter 1:

a. Clay was at a conference at McGill in Montreal.

b. Elena muses about her twins futures -- werewolves or not?

c. This will be their first Christmas with just the four of them.

Chapter 2:

a. The Lucas Elena suspects her Logan has been spending too much time with is probably Lucas Cortez, the lawyer and sorcerer of Cortez-Winterbourne Investigations (in case you haven't read Dime Store Magic and Industrial Magic, which were my first Women of Otherworld books).

b. Clay had every bathroom lock at Stonehaven within a month of living there, according to Jeremy. Which twin is like their dad?

Chapter 3: Learn how pre-kindergarten has gone for the twins.

Chapter 5:

a. There's a Harry Potter reference.

b. Elena tells us what stories Clay told Kate before Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

c. There's a family discussion about how many hours a week most parents work.

Chapter 6:

a. There's some mention of Clay's childhood games with Nick.

b. Reese makes up another story about how he lost part of the last two fingers of his right hand for the twins.

Chapter 8:

a. The Karl Elena mentions is probably Karl Marsten.

b. Elena tells readers about some Pack practices and changes being made to them.

Chapter 8:

a. More about Noah, who suffers from Fetal Alcohol Effects. See Frostbitten

b. There's another mention of Lucas [Cortez] and Paige [Winterbourne].

Chapter 10: Look here for lessons one and two for werewolves who are man-eaters.

Chapter 13: Elena knows what happened in his past that keeps Reese from hooking up with girls, but Nick doesn't.

Chapter 14: Yes, Roy still has Peyton and he calls weekly, according to Piper.

Chapter 18:

a. Karl Marsten's wife, Hope Adams, is an Expisco half-demon. See Personal Demon and Living With the Dead

b. Jeremy Danvers' girlfriend, Jaime Vegas, is a necromancer. See Haunted, Broken, Living With the Dead, etc.

I enjoyed this one, especially the color illustrations. ( )

A full-length, fully-developed story with a mystery format. Elena and Clay are two werewolves on a Christmas vacation getaway with their two children. While they're in town, a 'lone wolf' approaches them - and his overly-friendly attitude raises alarm bells. Does this guy know that Elena's her wolf pack's designated investigator? Has he been up to something (like, say, murdering humans) that's against pack rules?
I had two categories of problems with this story. First, on a personal level: You cannot get two pages through this story without the main characters trying to have sex and being interrupted by their children. OK, I am sure that this does happen in families, but it is overdone and unappealing (although the author seems to think it is 'cute.')
I also was not won over by the Big Drama of whether to tell the kids that they're in a werewolf family, or not. Maybe it is just that the target audience for this story is mothers - and I am not, nor do I have any interest in being one.
Second category, on a technical level: The mystery is solved with a very unsurprising 'twist' and a trite 'boogeyman.' The big finale also doesn't make sense in the context. It's pedophiles. (It's always pedophiles.) However, we get this big showdown where everyone's in the woods and the evil werewolf pedophile is about to 'get' the little girl, and he has to be physically attacked to keep him away from her. But, umm, there's been no indication that he wants to kill or eat the kid. And he's not about to molest her out in the woods with a gun pointed at him, is he? The story also contains that worst feature of poorly-executed mysteries: an overly-long expository bit at the end explaining everything that just happened. ( )

Christmas outing with the twins for Clay and Elena and having to solve a mystery along the way and find out the four year olds have figured out they are werewolves. Really like this series, but confused if she's publishing away from the big houses? ( )