Weregirl
I received an ARC for free, in exchange for an honest review.I wanted to this book to be a 5-star book so bad. I thought it would be. It has a lot of great stuff. Between the werewolf and intrigue and the smooth reading that kept me racing through the pages, I was so certain it would be at least 4 stars. So what happened?
The first problem that started unraveling everything for me was the ending. Granted, the romance was a minor plot point, but when it fell so flat, it just seemed to zap the energy from the whole story. The problems kind of worked their way backward from there. In order to really address my issues, I'll have to get into specifics, which may spoil it for some.
Nessa meets a gray wolf. It's apparent from the beginning that he's also a werewolf. Chayton even tells us he's a werewolf. But Nessa never seems to get that. She's always treating him as if he's a wolf (what will he think when he sees a girl come out of where the wolf used to be?). This got annoying, especially as the author dropped hints as to whole the gray wolf was, and Nessa (literally) ran in the other direction. Even at the end of the book, faced with nearly indisputable proof that she knows the gray wolf's human form and that she may be in love with him, I'm not sure Nessa has any clue who he is. I mean, come on!
It also seems to me that at the end she's in more danger than she was when she started. Despite resolving the immediate conflict, the giant company has video of her transforming, they have her blood sample, and she's in possession of papers that would prevent her from suing the big company (I'm not sure if she signed them, but that seemed like a huge setup with no resolution). I know authors want to leave room for the next story, but either set it up or don't. Don't just leave us hanging! This was a bit too much for me.
Chayton. Super interesting character, only made a few appearances, and despite the fact that she was majorly attracted to him (he's too old for her anyway), he ends up being kind of a dud of a character. He's not really the mentor or the friend or the guide, because he obviously knew things and was keeping them from her, telling her she needed to figure everything out for herself. Seriously, she's a sixteen-year-old (I think) going into super dangerous territory with genetically engineered, aggressive wolves, a company with no conscience, and wolf body she's not entirely comfortable with. Does he WANT her to die? Annoying, but not enough to demerit the book on it's own.
Bree does a lot of the heavy lifting in this book. I know Nessa is kind of put out by the whole werewolf transformation stuff and trying to keep her life on course, but seriously.
Most of the complaints are relatively minor, but they all add up to a bit of disappointment, and an ending that doesn't satisfy is the hardest for me to get over. Seriously, this could have been a four or five star book if the romance angle had panned out properly. That ending really took Nessa's perceived IQ down a few notches. Ugh. So unfortunate.
The good news is I think the author is an excellent writer, and I'd be interested in reading future books. Those nits can be worked out, and the more you write, the more you learn, so future books should be stellar. *fingers crossed*
