Review: Tangle of Need by Nalini Singh

Item: Tangle of Need (Psy-Changeling, #11)
Rating: 5
Author: Kate

Posted June 28, 2020 by Kate

Check out on Goodreads | Buy on Amazon
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal
Also by this author: Rock Addiction (Rock Kiss, #1), Rock Hard (Rock Kiss #2), Heart of Obsidian (Psy-Changeling, #12)
Series: Psy-Changeling #11
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Source: My shelves

Adria, wolf changeling, and resilient soldier, has made a break with the past. Now comes a new territory, and a devastating new complication: Riaz, a SnowDancer lieutenant already sworn to someone else.
For Riaz, the primal attraction he feels for Adria is a staggering betrayal. For Adria, his dangerous lone-wolf appeal is beyond sexual. It consumes her. It terrifies her. It threatens to undermine everything she has built of her new life. But fighting their wild compulsion toward one another proves a losing battle.
Their coming together is an inferno... and a melding of two wounded souls who promise each other no commitment, no ties, no bonds. Only pleasure. Too late, they realize that they have more to lose than they ever imagined. Drawn into a cataclysmic Psy war that may alter the fate of the world itself, they must make a decision that might just break them both.

New to the series? Read my review of book one, Slave to Sensation.

Tangle of Need was such a lovely surprise to me. This is saying something… because I’m reading this as a reread! This is the 11th book in the Psy-Changeling series, where everything finally comes to a head. The last wonderful book, Kiss of Snow, showed war brewing almost to a breaking point, but Tangle of Need is where the first steps are taken in the Psy’s civil war.

I went into this one a little bit grouchy because I only vaguely remembered this one from the first time I read it a few years ago. It was never one I picked up to periodically read before I decided to reread the entire series, so I understandably didn’t remember much. The next book after this, Heart of Obsidian, is my favorite book in the series (KALEB!) and I just wanted to get Tangle of Need out of the way so I could have my wicked way with Heart of Obsidian. But of course, I’d nearly forgotten that this was Nalini Singh that we’re talking about.

Tangle of Need is one of my favorite books from my reread. And it’s not necessarily because of Riaz and Adria themselves, but because this book is a community romance. Of course, heartsick Riaz and Adria, a SnowDancer lieutenant and a senior soldier, respectfully, were a huge part of the reason this book was a success. But we also had a lot of Kaleb in this book. It was also a continuation of Kiss of Snow, as Sienna and Hawke’s romance continued to grow, flourish and stabilize. We saw a milestone reached in Riley and Mercy’s relationship, and also got to know the Arrows better, specifically Vasic and Aden. Plus we were introduced to BlackSea, a coalition Pack of the underwater changelings!! This book was teeming with playfulness and affection between Packmates and lovers, and it was a joy to read.

The man she’d glimpsed that morning, and the one who’d cared enough to put his arms around a packmate who was hurting, he was dangerous, someone who spoke to her soul beyond the primitive tug of sex.

There were lots of perspectives in Tangle of Need, but it was never a struggle to keep up or keep things straight. I loved watching all the groups come together as allies, and I especially loved how amazing the SnowDancer community is, which was really highlighted in this one. It wasn’t an action-packed book but handled more of the political intrigue sides as the different factions ready for the possibility of war, and deciding which side they’ll be one. Riaz and Adria’s weren’t as much the main focus of this book (think of Walker and Lara’s courtship from the Kiss of Snow book, but still a bit more screentime) as other couples have been in the past, but I still felt that their story suited the time, especially as this was a temporary goodbye to the wolf pack for awhile.

We learned in Play of Passion that Riaz had met his human mate in Europe… but that she was in a very happen marriage, not interested in the mating bond. Rejected in the worst way, his wolf is unable to accept the thought of a relationship with any other females. Adria, who we also first met in Play of Passion, was in a terrible relationship with a man who resented that she was more dominant. Riaz and Adria don’t like each other at first, but gradually, as they start to have to work together, they realize their resentment is frustration.

I… was not sure about Adria going in. She seemed hard and bitter in the brief glimpse from Play of Passion, and I wasn’t all that thrilled to have her as a heroine. But turns out, that’s not her at all and I loved having another fierce female in the fold! Raiz, too, was awesome. Even broken, he had a wolfish playfulness, tenderness, and assertiveness that you’d expect from a dominant changeling wolf.