Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Vinni George

Genre: Gay Paranormal Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Fated Mates/Insta-Love, Mystery, Series, Shifters

Length: 222 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

Quin Hunter likes the quiet life. He runs his gallery, forges famous art, and operates a fence where black market buyers get fakes and the real pieces get returned to their rightful owners. Nice and simple. He doesn’t do field work. But a call from his twin thrusts him into the action, and now he and his brothers are racing the clock to steal a painting from someone who never should have had it in the first place.

Dimitri Crysanthos is no stranger to mistakes. All he wanted to do was make life easier for his sister. Instead, he ended up making everything harder for both of them. With his life and his sister’s hanging in the balance, he has no choice but to do whatever one of the most ruthless men in Amsterdam tells him to do. All Dimitri wants is to stay alive…until a stranger changes everything. Now Dimitri craves something terrifying, something that will put him and his sister in even more danger—his freedom.

The stakes of the heist have changed, and Quin refuses to quit until Dimitri is safe for good. Can the ORCA team get the art and Quin’s fated mate out of Amsterdam, or are the odds too stacked against them?

Full Color is book three in the Organization for the Return of Criminals and Assets (ORCA) series, featuring an orca shifter art forger who isn’t keen on field work, a chameleon shifter with a lucrative secret talent, and a heist where the target is far more valuable than a stolen painting!

Review –

This is my favorite in the series so far. Each book is another part of a mystery of who kidnapped Felix in Black & White, so they’re ongoing. The individual couples get their HEA at the end, so there are no loose ends as far as relationships, just the mystery.

Quin, an orca shifter, was introduced in the first book. He’s one of the Hunter brothers, with the others being Nero from Black & White, Cal from Grayscale, and Julius from Monochrome. Julius’ story is after this one.

Each brother has skills, with Quin’s being art forgery. He’s a brilliant artist and can fool even the biggest art experts. He’s also Cal’s twin.

Dimitri, also an artist, is a chameleon shifter. He was introduced in Grayscale when Cal and Jack were undercover in their mission to find out who kidnapped Felix. Dimitri has been held hostage for a year by Stefan Dasselaar, a powerful man in the art world. Dasselaar is in the process of planning a gala where he’ll be auctioning off rare paintings, most of which were stolen. The highlight of the gala will be The Evolution of Man, a painting that’s been missing for a long time. It’s also the most sought after painting in the world. One of those who had been trying to find it is Juno, the Hunter brothers’ grandmother. Juno hasn’t been in any of the books yet that I recall, but she’s still important to the stories as a whole. Juno is retired now, and she’s not where she can be contacted.

The reason Dimitri has been Dasselaar’s prisoner is because he has a talent unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. His hand changes colors to match original paintings. If the painting is fake, his hand turns a grayish color. Dasselaar uses this to prove the paintings he has on auction are legit. Dimitri is pumped with drugs that keep him from fully shifting. He’s given just enough to do his little party trick (so to speak) but nothing more.

Dimitri was able to do his little demonstration for Cal in the last book. Cal knew there was something special about the man, but not for him. We find out later that he suspected him of being Quin’s mate even then.

Dimitri broke my heart. He has a sister who is ill who Stefan uses against him in order to keep him in line. His sister has her schooling paid for, an apartment, and the bare minimum of her meds. The reader doesn’t meet her until long into the book, but everything Dimitri does is for her. He’s so lonely, but thankfully he’s been allowed to have a sketchbook. This is literally his only ‘luxury’. Something about Cal has Dimitri drawing him. Over time, that picture changes from Cal and his characteristics to someone similiar yet not. By the time he gets the man right in his head and in the sketchbook, he’s a totally different person. We know it’s because Cal and Quin are twins, but he doesn’t. So, he’s basically drawing his dream man, though he knows the man isn’t real. Nobody will be rescuing him. They haven’t in a year, so he’s kind of given up hope.

In my heart, I wanted the stranger who stared up at me from my drawings to be real so badly. I wanted to believe he was the one who could set me free, and as dangerous as those dreams were, I let myself sink into them as I put pencil to paper and sketched him again, this time wrapped in the cool white sheets next to me, his dark brown eyes closed in sleep, his thick inky eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks.

Until one day he sees the man from his imagination at Dasselaar’s house. Thankfully Quin sees him too, knowing right off that there’s something special about him. Quin’s invited to the gala slash auction, even being ordered invited to stay at the estate for the weekend leading up to the big event. This gives him the chance to get to know the mystery guy, who turns out to be Dimitri. He even manages, with Felix’s help with the security, to sneak into Dimitri’s room several times. They ended up having sex after the second time, I think? By then, they both knew they were mates.

As happy as they were to have found their mate, Quin and his brothers still had the matter of the auction and stealing The Evolution of Man back, which is the whole point of Quin getting an invite to the auction to begin with, and later, to get Dimitri’s sister.

These guys took WAY too many chances. I kept waiting for them to get caught, and they almost did a couple of times. While I could understand the fated mate thing, I still couldn’t believe how careless they were a few times. It was obvious from the start that Dasselaar was on to Quin, and that his invitation to the auction wasn’t simply because he respected Quin’s reputation in the art community. He knew that Quin’s grandmother had made it her mission to try to find The Evolution of Man, and now suddenly her grandson is showing up as soon as Dasselaar is about to auction off the long-missing painting. Also, Quin and Cal are twins. From what I understand, they’re identical, even if their hair is different. Quin may carry himself as more refined than Cal, but they still had to look similar. Hell, Dimitri was able to draw them both before he even met his mate. I found the fact that Dasselaar didn’t put two and two together there a bit odd. And if the man knew Quin was Juno’s grandson, wouldn’t he also know about his twin?

Inquiring minds and all that. 😉

Everything obviously comes together for these guys. Quin, his brothers, and their mates are able to rescue both Dimitri and his sister. The mystery of who kidnapped Felix is still there, however. Julius still has his story to go, so I know it’ll all be resolved there.

Overall, this is a really good book, and again, my favorite in the series so far. I love how Dimitri was able to conjure up Quin in his imagination before he ever even knew he really existed. And I love how Quin immediately jumped in to try to rescue him, knowing right off that Dimitri was his mate. There’s something about well-written fated mate books that give me all kinds of feels. Full Color definitely did that. I look forward to reading Julius’ story.