Vanni is furious when her fiancé tricks her into attending a conference where his father’s church is protesting the New Species Organization. She hates everything those vile bigots stand for. Vanni goes to the bar to cool off and ends up seated next to a handsome New Species. Things heat up fast when they are both drugged.Smiley doesn’t want to believe the sweet human would dose them with the breeding drug. He’s willing to trust her and determined to save her life. He’ll hold her. Protect her. Offer up his body to distract them both from the pain. She is his female, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.

~ 3.5 Smiley Stars ~ 

Smiley is book thirteen in the New Species series by Laurann Dohner. This series is best read in order, so you can get a feel for the friendships, world building and trials these characters go through.

Smiley is the first primate to get a book, but it was not as great as I was hopping for. We start off meeting Vanni, who is mad at her fiancé for tricking her into attending his father’s church protest. She wants nothing to do with her soon to be father-in-law’s hate church and the lies they spit about the New Species. Instead of leaving. What does she do, but head off to the bar and ends up next to our ever loving New Species Smiley. Things go from good to bad fast and now Vanni’s life is plastered all over the news. 

The relationship with Smily and Vanni is HAWT and STEAMY in the bedroom, but the characters are eh! I have liked Smily from the moment he was introduced to us in this series, but he was just ok in this installment. There where times I liked him and then other times he felt flat. I also got the impression that he was being pushy with the marriage/mate aspect and that he repeated himself a lot in this area when he was trying to convince Vanni. Vanni was dime whited, immature, boring, and just blah. She did not work for me. I also never like it when a character is still in a relationship, even if he is a jerk, with someone else when things get going with another character. As for the relationship, they never spent enough time together to really make me feel that connection.

We get no shortage of hot sex, but Vanni and Smiley as a couple felt forced. The plot felt a little anticlimactic with the church thing and how it ends was too easy. The secondary characters where amazing. I am hoping for Jericho and Breeze to each get a book. As for Smiley this book was just ok! I am still a fan and looking forward to more. 

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