I liked Blood Bound even better than the first Mercy Thompson novel. It has everything - wonderful world building, interesting characters, realistic motivations, a scary bad guy and even a little romance. This book especially reminded me of early Anita Blake novels in the best way. Our heroine has powers of her own, is police-adjacent, attracts men like no other, and does what she wants fully aware of the risks. Very nearly a five star read.And now to get a little spoiler-y:I think the three guys vying for her attention pose interesting problems. Sam "only" wants to have children while she wants to remain childless, so for those two to get together one of them would have to give. And really, with two personalities like that can you see that lasting at all?Through a freak of Alpha-ness, Adam has a hard time letting Mercy exercise free will. He can try but when things get tough that's always going to pop out. She would truly have to surrender to Adam for that relationship to work.And then we have Stefan. He's powerful. He keeps his word (basically). He's smart, not killing those two Renfields 'cause he knew it would piss Mercy off. But he's also a vampire.I can see his love going one of two ways - the guy who has admired from afar finally getting a chance and doing everything to not squander it, or guy who has gone all stalker-y from afar takes things into his own hands.For the record I like Stefan best, but that may be because we know the least about him. Samuel comes in second, and Adam dead last.
