Standalone
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
📱 Ebook

⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read My Emergency Contact Is a Wolf Shifter yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.

OPENING HOOK

A girls’ weekend, a twisted ankle, a wolf shifter groundskeeper, and a foul-mouthed African Grey parrot who calls the love interest “Bad Dog” for most of the book. This book is fantastic.

THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED

Zoey’s whole remote work team heads to a resort to celebrate finally being rid of a dickish boss, and it turns out every single one of them is a woman despite the gender-neutral names, so it becomes a full girls’ weekend by happy accident. That’s where she meets Liam, the groundskeeper, after twisting her ankle while wandering away from a drunken skinny dip in the lake with the girls. He patches her up, they spend the night together, and since there’s a real connection added to the fact that she doesn’t expect to see him again, she decides to let loose and have a fantastic night. Classic choice, right?

Weeks later, Zoey has moved to a nearby town and while she’s unpacking, falls, laying there out cold until a neighborhood kid named Bobbi (who has zero concept of boundaries and just lets herself into Zoe’s apartment whenever) is the one who finds her.

Here’s the kicker though: when Zoe put Liam down as her emergency contact back at the resort, she thought that was a resort-only, temporary thing. She had no idea it would carry over into her actual medical records. So when she wakes up in the hospital and Liam walks in to pick her up, she is mortified. This is a woman who takes care of everyone including her own irresponsible mother, and now she’s the one being cared for and she hates it.

And Liam is just… genuinely great at it. Thoughtful, considerate, anticipates what she needs without making a thing of it. Obviously she was already halfway in love with him from the resort, and now he’s just quietly working his way further into her heart during concussion recovery.

Let’s add a little backstory: Liam’s an alpha wolf shifter whose Alpha father ran things with a much harsher, more corporal style of pack leadership. Liam rejected all of that and cut ties with his pack, but it left him with all these protective instincts he doesn’t always know how to channel appropriately, which is how we get him letting himself into her apartment when he goes to drop off flowers outside her door.

He see a mountain of unpacked boxes in the hall and doesn’t want them being stolen or tripped over, so he uses the spare key without permission to ‘just set them inside’ causing Markie the parrot to scream “BAD DOG” before yelling at Alexa to call the police, while Liam is absolutely panicking trying to get a traumatized bird to stop ratting him out to law enforcement. Earlier Markie had watched him shift into a wolf to show Bobbi, and he’s never let Liam forget that he thinks he’s a dog. He’s been not-quite-affectionately known as DOG or (more often) BAD DOG ever since.

Honestly, Markie might be the best character in the book. This is the second unrelated book I’ve read with a swearing hilarious parrot character that I’ve fallen completely in love with. So I’m starting to think there’s just something about a foul-mouthed bird with opinions that makes me happy.

BEST PART OF THIS BOOK

Markie treating Liam like a dog he has to tolerate in his own territory, and Liam having to just… respect it because it’s the parrot’s house too. Watching a literal apex predator bristle at being called “Bad Dog” by a bird is comedy gold.

WORST PART OF THIS BOOK

Zoey’s walls. Liam proves over and over that he’s safe, that he’s trustworthy, and there’s a real frustration in watching her keep holding back anyway. She doesn’t trust her own judgement, so it’s not a flaw in the writing, just hard to watch someone who’s been let down their entire life take their time trusting it. Everyone heals at their own pace, but it was the toughest part of the read for me.

I’m impatient when it comes to people refusing to trust evidence right in front of them (either good or bad) over and over, so this is far more of a me problem than the writing. I recognize that it’s realistic and natural despite my impatience to get through it; this is a personal failing that I am aware of.

THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN

🔥🔥🔥🔥 — open door, spicy. The romance is central to the plot, not a subplot. No fade to black here.

THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?

Satisfied. I was super happy to see them end up together. It’s not a magically-fixed ending either, Liam still has to get a handle on his instinct to patrol and smother her, and Zoey has to actually learn to let someone else take care of her. Not everybody will let you down, and that’s a hard lesson when you’ve been burned over and over. I liked that they worked through some of it in therapy on the page because it was a nice way to get backstory and watch actual growth instead of just telling us they fixed it.

THE MOMENT THAT MADE ME LAUGH

The alarm scene. Markie screaming “Bad Dog,” after yelling at Alexa to call the police, and Liam full-on panicking trying to stop a vigilant parrot from getting him arrested for what was supposed to be the simple act of dropping off flowers outside her door. Peak chaos.

WOULD WE REREAD IT?

Yes. It’s funny, it’s absurd, it’s a little unreasonable, and that is absolutely half the charm.

WHO IS THIS FOR

Anyone who wants to laugh the whole way through. You do need to suspend some reality between the shifter stuff and an alarmingly opinionated parrot, but it’s completely worth it.

WHERE TO GET THIS BOOK

Plot Twisted review of My Emergency Contact Is a Wolf Shifter by Roxie Ray