Infected: Prey by Andrea Speed (Infected Book #1)

TITLE: ⟫ Infected: Prey

AUTHOR: ⟫ Andrea Speed

SERIES: ⟫ Infected Book #1

RATING: ⟫ 5/5

BLURB: ⟫ In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds. The murder of a former cop draws Roan into an odd case where an unidentifiable species of cat appears to be showing an unusual level of intelligence. He juggles that with trying to find a missing teenage boy, who, unbeknownst to his parents, was "cat" obsessed. And when someone is brutally murdering infecteds, Eli Winters, leader of the Church of the Divine Transformation, hires Roan to find the killer before he closes in on Eli. Working the crimes will lead Roan through a maze of hate, personal grudges, and mortal danger. With help from his tiger-strain infected partner, Paris Lehane, he does his best to survive in a world that hates and fears their kind… and occasionally worships them.

REVIEW: ⟫ I don’t even know why I decided to re-read this book – I think I saw the author’s name on Goodreads and I found myself wondering what happened to the protagonists so re-downloaded it from my kindle library.

Firstly, there is no explicit mm sex in this couple of novellas, which isn’t an issue but definitely isn’t the ‘norm’ when it comes to mm nowadays. I absolutely loved the whole concept of the infected and virus children, and remember being utterly delighted back when I read it initially. I loved it even more now – it felt fresh and new compared to the werewolf/shifter stories I’ve been reading over the years and I can’t think of anyone who’s used the same idea.

Roan and Paris are a fabulous couple – both complete AHs in their way and very much suited to each other. Their back stories are slowly revealed as you follow them in their investigations and they are just fascinating – the world they live in is fascinating and I was entranced from the time I began re-reading. I feel that the story has definitely aged well – the lack of internet, smart cell phones, etc. didn’t hurt the story at all.

I really enjoyed this revisit and will be continuing to re-read the series. I’m not sure how far I actually got in my reading so this could be a lot of fun rediscovering an old favoured author and ‘new to me’ work!