My Wolf's Bane: Book Review

My Wolf's Bane

Veronica Blade

Crush Publishing, Inc

January 28th 2013

Young Adult | Romance | Paranormal
Werewolf | Shifter

Official Blurb - 
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: As with any Veronica Blade book, this is a ROMANCE NOVEL, meaning it's romance FIRST and everything else is secondary. Rated PG-13 for sexual situations and mild profanity.

Different species. Mortal enemies. It'll never work, but they'll die trying.

Autumn Rossi thought she was a normal teenager. Suddenly, she can outrun every critter in the forest, making her wonder if she’s even human.

When the new guy at school, Zack de Luca, witnesses a questionable scene, he unfairly pins her as stuck-up. He acts like he hates her, yet he keeps bailing her out of trouble. Not only is Zack both insufferable and irresistible, he seems to sniff her anytime he gets close.

As passion flares between them, Autumn isn’t sure which is more dangerous: her psycho ex-boyfriend, or falling for Zack — who’s risking his life just by being near her.

See the book trailer: http://youtu.be/GEXgVD1NblU

I have given this book a generous rating at two stars. I really wanted to like this one. Werewolves are my favorite and I love a good romance. So this seemed like it had all the makings of a good winner. Sigh. Not so much. By page two I knew the best this book would score was a three star. The writing was very scattered. Much like the thoughts of a person suffering from an attention deficit disorder. There just wasn't a decent transition between ideas. Sentences flit with little flow or transition which felt very hyper. Luckily as I pushed through I became accustomed to the writing patterns and it grew to be less noticeable.Unfortunately, there was very little development of the characters or any outside story.
 

There are a few of words that fit this book very well. Shallow, masochistic, corny, and fantasy. Werewolf was definitely not a word I would add to the list. There is nothing werewolf involved. Zack can shift into a werewolf and he sniffs her a lot but that is all. Any other werewolf mentions are strictly background fodder for maneuvering purposes. The worst of these random facts is the information that there is a werewolf king. Not two words I think should ever be put together. Maybe werewolf chief and absolutely werewolf alpha. But werewolf king was just corny. The "shift" into werewolf involved some mist intermediary state in which their cloths would just drop to the ground unless made of natural fibers. All the passion and animal nature you would expect from a werewolf is lacking. Plenty of desire on the girls side which is fairly typical for a teenager. Far too many scantily clad moments in this book. Would you really be sleeping in almost nothing with a near stranger in your house? Of course all those moments were terribly unrealistic. Perfect fantasy guy only taking a nibble in a situation where there are no adults and a bed and late hours. I was put very strongly in mind of early teenage fantasies as I read this book. As if some girl concocted every attribute she thought would make for the perfect guy and tossed it all in. In order to parade each awesome trait she would make up random scenarios to showcase them. That is all werewolves are in this book. Some random information to bring Zack and Autumn into a specific fantasy scenario. So strong was the teenage fantasy impression that this was unrealistic to the point of painful. Bang your head on the table sort of idiotic repetitive cycle. In fact three fourths of the way through the book I came across the word masochistic. A perfect description of this reading experience. But having forged so far into the story I just had to finish.

Could you hit us over the head with the HOT stick one more time please? It isn't as if in the last 100 whacks we didn't get the point. Zach and Autumn are two incredibly unbelievably hot people. On top of being uber hot they are playing some tedious dance of not liking each other while liking each other. Please, I beg of you break the cycle. It is driving me crazy. The death of one of the characters would be preferable to another round of he likes me, he likes me not.

The bad kid is too scripted. What are the chances a kid would turn out so obsessed and crazy? Too convenient. The parents are hard to swallow. Over obsessive of their child's every move and then suddenly showering her with money and flying across the country to leaver her completely unsupervised for weeks. As if. When it comes to the end the fight scene between Zach and Daniel is awkward. The methods used to subdue are strange.

The meaning behind the title never became clear to me. I could speculate but it isn't overly obvious. I think a title change might be best.

This wasn't a terribly long read. Longer than I would have liked to spend on this story. This is a book for those more interested in combative foreplay riddled with inner turmoil and daft foot in the mouth moments.

Content:
Language: Moderate to Heavy
Violence: Mild to Moderate
Sexual: Moderate