Kimmie Procrastinated Picking a College and Accidentally Picked a Whole Other Species — Anacor
The Deal Series, Book 14 · by Desiree Sandz · Sci-Fi Romance · 18+
The opening of Anacor is the most personally attacking thing Desiree Sandz has ever written and I say that with love.
Kimmie did not apply to a single college. Not one. She did not do a Google search unless you count "funniest college mascots." Her high school provided a helpful site, www.pickacollage.com, which she ignored until halfway through senior year and also genuinely believed for a while was about arts and crafts. Her mother, who knows exactly what her daughter is capable of, has started threatening to submit applications under the alias "Mom Knows Best."
If procrastination were a sport, Kimmie notes, she'd have a full ride by now. Bestie. We've all been there.
Then the tone shifts
She's at the kitchen table in February, two pamphlets in front of her, onions and garlic on the stove, her mother's movements a little sharper than usual. Homework done. Books still open. A decision she has put off for exactly as long as it can be put off.
And that's when the book turns, because Kimmie's actual inheritance was never a campus. There's a convoy. There are bikes. There's a broad-shouldered man in a cut with RAZ across his chest who takes one look at her and says, roughly and not unkindly, that she's definitely MaryMay's daughter, that she's got her mother's hazel eyes, that her mother was a knockout. He hands her a helmet, swings her bags over his shoulder, calls her "little one," and tells her it's time to go.
She gripped the edge of his vest, the engine growled underneath her, and every doubt she had got ripped away by the wind. That's the moment her life restarts.
Yes, it's a biker book AND an alien book
Book 14 is the most genre-blended entry in The Deal series and it absolutely commits: motorcycle club romance energy on Earth, alpha-and-pack dynamics off it. Anacor is an alpha. There's hierarchy, scent, dominance, a little sister called Lalivla who's pure sunshine, and a household where everyone knows exactly where they stand. If your two favourite tropes are MC and shifter, Sandz just built you a crossover.
Trope list
- Alpha hero with a pack, a hierarchy and a scent thing
- Biker/MC found family with a dead-mother mystery underneath
- Coming of age — a girl deciding who she's going to be
- Homecoming and reunion after time away
- Protective older figures who become real family
- Dual POV, with Kimmie carrying the first four chapters solo
The homecoming scene
Late in the book she sneaks upstairs to wake her sister with a wet willy — "wakey wakey sugar cakey" — and gets tackled in a hug, and the door bangs open and Anacor is standing there breathing hard, and his face goes from surprise to something hungry and furious in about half a second while his father gives him a very pointed look. It's funny and charged and domestic all at once. That's the whole book in one scene.
Spice check
High, alpha-flavoured, possessive, adults only. You know what you're here for.
Read this if…
You want alpha shifter romance energy in a sci-fi wrapper, a heroine who starts as a mess and ends as somebody's whole world, and one of the most re-readable openings in the series.
Content notes and placement
Book 14 of sixteen, and at nearly six hundred pages one of the longest. Adults only with explicit content. Themes include the death of a parent, motorcycle club culture, alpha and pack dominance dynamics, and possessive behaviour.
Standalone-friendly — Kimmie is new to everything, so you learn alongside her — though the wider series context makes the off-world material richer.
The verdict
The boldest genre blend in The Deal series: motorcycle club romance on Earth, alpha shifter romance off it, wrapped in science fiction, and somehow it holds together. Kimmie's opening — the ignored college applications, the "funniest college mascots" search, the alias "Mom Knows Best" — is the most charming character introduction in the series, and the tonal pivot from that to a convoy of bikes and a helmet handed over by a man named Raz is genuinely thrilling.
Book 14 of The Deal. Bikes, packs, and a girl who finally picked something.
