I had just listened to a Molly Harper series on Audible when I realized that her Mystic Bayou series would be good for the aquatic-based Wyrd & Wonder theme this year. Book 4 seemed to feature selkies if nothing else. So I dove into the series.

These are Audible Original stories so they are included with a subscription. The story starts when an anthropologist from a quasi-government organization (made up of shifters and humans who are in the know) is sent to investigate the remote town of Mystic Bayou Louisiana. The town has existed for hundreds of years with humans and shifters knowing about each other. That isn’t happening in the wider world. However, the League knows that the secret is probably going to come out soon. Jillian’s job to figure out a game plan for when supernaturals need to go public. How has Mystic Bayou functioned so well for so long?

There are many complications when she gets there. There is a weird rift out in the swamp that has been calling shifters to the area for generations. But now it seems to be getting bigger.

Each book in the series is a paranormal romance focusing on a specific couple. The series does need to be read in order though in order to understand the overall story.

Things I liked about the series:

  • Fun stories with different types of shifters that you don’t always see in stories
  • A magical pie shop
  • They learned as they went along in the series. Here’s a quote from the last book of the series when someone comments on how quickly they jumped into action when there was a little problem.

“Well, we’ve finally learned our lesson. When people we love start experiencing weird stuff we handle it officially and quickly. Otherwise, chaos and bullshit ensure.”

Amen to that! I hate it when a series is just people making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

Things that I didn’t like:

  • For a while in book 1 Jillian couldn’t figure out what kind of shifter the male lead was. It would have been a fun plot point to try to figure that out with her if the whole book wasn’t called How To Date Your Dragon. It was just annoying with that info.
  • The major conflict in the series was sort of hand-waved away around book 5 or so. New things were happening but it very much went from THIS IS THE POSSIBLE END OF THE WORLD to Oh yeah, never mind about that after all.
  • This was steamier romance than I like – especially on audio – so there was a lot of fast forwarding.