Early Book Review: Bears Behaving Badly (BeWere my Heart) by MaryJanice Davidson

Bears Behaving Badly is the first book in the BeWere my Heart series by MaryJanice Davidson. It is currently scheduled for release on March 31 2020. 

These social worker bear shifters give the term "mama bear" a whole new meaning! Werebear shifter Annette Garsea is a caseworker for the Interspecies Placement Agency. When a selectively mute and freakishly strong teen werewolf is put in her custody, Annette has to uncover the young girl's secrets if she's to have any hopes of helping her. And not even the growling of a scruffy private investigator can distract her from her mission. Bear shifter David Auberon appreciates Annette's work with at-risk teen shifters, but he's not sure if her latest charge is so much a vulnerable teen as a predator who should be locked up. All that changes when he, Annette, and her motley band of juveniles find themselves dodging multiple murder attempts and uncovering a trafficking cartel that doesn't just threaten the kids, but risks discovery of the shifters by the wider world of homo sapiens.

Bears Behaving Badly has a good deal going on.Annette and David had some great dialogue, and I enjoyed the clueless, thought to be unrequited love, aspect of the story. They were fun and I liked getting to know them. I also really liked the secondary characters- and found some of them more interesting and entertaining than the major players on occasion.  I like that parts of the character backstories are slowly revealed rather than having a massive information dump. I thought that the mystery of what was going on and who the mole was had a good pace and had a good balance of danger and character exploration. Although, I have to say that some of the big picture was a little obvious to me and I wanted to facepalm when Annette and David finally figured it out. The story was fun and enjoyable. However, there several occasions when the transitions were sudden and I had to go back and reread bits to see if I missed something, some clue, as to how they got to be somewhere or which line of dialogue when to which character. Everytime that this happened with a scene transition I was taken out of the story and it took away from my enjoyment a bit. 

Bears Behaving Badly is a fun romantic adventure with a nice balance of humor, mystery, and a touch of heat.