The Bear's Forever Mate

This is Book 3 in the Borealis Bears series. Cooper is about to go into mating fever and he knows that he’s going to mate Amber but not right now. He has a journal written with all kinds of rules and he’s not ready to mate just yet. No matter what his grandfather wants, this is on his time table and no one else’s! Or so he thinks. His mating bond doesn’t stop for anyone or anything, or does it? Something’s going on with Amber and it’s messing with his bear and the bond. This is one time when the family is going to have to step up and help out! I really enjoyed reading this series. The books are so fun to read. There’s always something happening that keeps you interested in the story. It’s not going to bog you down with unbelievable stuff so you can enjoy it and have a great time with the family. I highly recommend the series to you if you like a fun story.

This book was well written and very descriptive. The characters were so well defined I felt I knew them. I need to now read the first two books in this series. Highly recommend this book.

This was a step down from the previous books. The strengths of this series were comedy and avid sexy-times, but here the humor was largely absent and the sex is disjointed. I dislike perpetuating the idea that grandparents get a say in their grandchildrens’ choice to partner, have kids, or otherwise, making all the grandparents’ commendations at the end left me miffed.

Cooper (36) and Amber’s (25) age gap conflict is either an unfortunate coincidence or a commentary on a widely circulated chart in 2019, iirc, illustrating that Leonardo DiCaprio (44 at the time) doesn’t date women over 25, which people found both fascinating and horrifying, sparking a lot of discussions about ageism and men attracted to imbalances of power. Numbers are arbitrary because everyone is different, and what’s important is the stage each partner is at in life. So while Amber may claim 25 is old enough to know her own mind with the old generalization that women mature faster than men, she ironically comes off as naive in this moment, especially since she was actually 23 when she supposedly met and fell in love with him.

Cooper overplays the jealous card even after mating fever is over, and the potential consequences of a delayed bond as mentioned by Alex feels conveniently pulled out of the author’s rear, much like what supplies Amber and Cooper pull and the random low flying helicopter they totally didn’t hear coming. Mason’s reunion with Amber was underwhelming and everything after felt like aimless ambling. Moreover, it’s clarified that humans for the most part, don’t actually know about shifters, raising issues for the previous books. The second epilogue was sheer backfilling, solidifying the notion that there wasn’t a lot of depth of thought, direction, or cohesive plan to this story.