Whatever for Hire (R. J. Blain)

Whatever for Hire: A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count)
The Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series, Book 5
R. J. Blain
Pen and Page Publishing
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Sometimes, cat shifter/sphinx Kanika wonders if naming her one-woman mercenary business Whatever for Hire was a mistake. Sure, she gets calls about bounty hunting and private investigations and various "gray areas of the law" jobs, but she also ends up rescuing cats from trees for a measly fifty bucks. Still, money's money, and she needs money, seeing as how she likes luxuries like a meal now and again. But when things go wrong, a muttered oath brings none other than the Devil himself to make an appearance... and, not for the first time in her too-interesting life, she finds herself on the wrong end of a diabolical bargain.
If it hadn't been for that bargain, she never would've taken the next job that came up: someone wanting a relative/business rival abducted and kept out of the way for a few months. And thus she never would've ended up in the company of Malcolm Findlay Stewart, the world's sexiest firefighter (who also makes a habit of rescuing kittens and puppies from blazes) and the man who tempts her to shatter her personal moral codes about getting involved with clients or targets and bury the pieces in an unmarked grave. She would've listened to the warning voice in the back of her head that told her there was a whole lot more going on than a simple family feud... something important enough to draw the attention of the Lord of Hell himself.

REVIEW: Yet another random audiobook selection via Libby and my library, I picked it because it looked like it could be fun... or, admittedly, it could be terrible. Comedy, after all, can be a very hard target to hit, and when it goes wrong, it often goes very wrong. I mostly grabbed it as filler; I like having multiple options downloaded. But the first audiobook selection of the workday disappointed me, so I queued up this one - and was off on what turned out to be an exciting ride, full of nice twists, snappy dialog, decent characters, and - yes - some nice sizzle (even if the sex scenes are strictly fade-to-black), along with healthy doses of humor, all built on a surprisingly solid story arc that kept me interested from start to finish.
Kanika's a graduate of the school of hard knocks, which can give her a chip on her shoulder but also makes her rather good at survival and improvising plans on the fly, talents that come in handy for an independent mercenary. She was forced to run away from her only relative in America after the woman tried to sell her off to the highest bidder - and that was before she hit adolescence and her magical nature was revealed, though as shifters go she's hardly a prodigy; as often as she ends up as her "true" self, the Egyptian sphinx, she ends up as the image of Bastet, Cleopatra, or an anthro "sex kitten" woman in a miniskirt and stiletto heels. This being a world in which magic's return is just another part of daily modern life, her ability isn't exactly unusual; many people manifest some form or another of magic these days, and some statistics even put the number of true, undiluted H. sapiens on a path to possible extinction unless the magic goes to sleep again in a few decades. Like any cat, she's got more than her share of pride, as well as a curious streak that can (and does) land her in all sorts of trouble. Add this to a colorful past that's more alluded to than spelled out, one where she's on a casual first-name basis with Lucifer, and Kanika's story is guaranteed to be wild. Her relationship with Malcolm starts out rocky, to say the least - abduction isn't exactly the cornerstone of a healthy relationship, something Kanika ruefully reminds herself of more than once - but they come to respect and rely on each other quickly when it becomes clear that they have mutual enemies. They're both also grown-up enough to understand concepts like consent (and delayed gratification; even when it's clear the attraction is mutual, they're both capable of putting off physical intimacy until they aren't in immediate danger). As the pair navigate an ever-growing list of problems, Kanika also has to deal with periodic check-ins by the Devil, plus a few other immortals who insist on complicating her life, part of ulterior motives that become clear later on.
There are a few threads left dangling by the end, subplots that may get tied up in other installments (I'm pretty sure all the series titles are standalones, but there may be crossover storylines or characters). The main bits, though, wrap up in a fairly satisfactory manner. Ultimately, Whatever for Hire delivers everything its title and blurb promised me, a nice little snack of a tale.

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