Month: September 2012

For­ev­er Were­wolf: For­ev­er Werewolf\Moon Kissed by Michele Hauf
My rat­ing: 1 of 5 stars

Full dis­clo­sure: I was giv­en a copy of this book to review. I’m glad I did­n’t buy it. I imag­ine I might have been harsh­er.

In For­ev­er Were­wolf, Tryst is just deliv­er­ing a pack­age to Wulf­siege on behalf of his father’s secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny when he gets trapped there by an avalanche. He does­n’t mind, though, because the recip­i­ent of that pack­age has a lus­cious daugh­ter, Lexi.

Female were­wolves are rare, and those few are pro­tect­ed like the pre­cious trea­sures they are. Even though Tryst was­n’t brought up in a pack, he knows that much. He also knows there’s some­thing very strange about the fact that Lexi isn’t claimed by any of the males in the pack — in fact, they seem to give her a wide berth. She’s obvi­ous­ly high­ly intel­li­gent and com­pe­tent, and she’s beau­ti­ful. She’s far more allur­ing to him than her spoiled, pam­pered princess sis­ter could ever be.

Lexi is fas­ci­nat­ed by Tryst, despite being warned away from the half-blood­ed wolf by her ail­ing father. He seems inter­est­ed in her, as well, but she fears that’s only because he does­n’t know her crip­pling secret: she has­n’t ever shift­ed. A were­wolf who can’t shift can’t mate, so she’s use­less in the eyes of the pack.

Tryst is warned away from Lexi by her father, head of the pack, as well, but he can’t seem to stay away from her. She’s like no oth­er woman, were­wolf or mor­tal, he’s ever encoun­tered. What is it that draws them to each oth­er? Is it worth risk­ing their lives for?

It was obvi­ous to me from the first pages of the book that Tryst and Lexi would get togeth­er, and that it would cost Tryst many bruis­es and much grief. The bad guy was all too obvi­ous, as well — if the aver­age read­er can’t iden­ti­fy him in the first men­tion, I’ll be shocked. (Per­haps I should be more spe­cif­ic and say “expe­ri­enced romance read­er” instead.)

As for Moon Kissed, it was so for­get­table that I’d have to look up the main male’s name. The female was Bel­la, some­thing I only recall due to bad mem­o­ries of Twi­light. Oh, wait, the male was Severo! Right then. Severo saves Bel­la from vam­pires who chase her, while fright­en­ing the hell out of her him­self, grop­ing her, and offer­ing absolute­ly no expla­na­tions of the strange new real­i­ties her world is sud­den­ly encom­pass­ing.

After that event, Bel­la learns that her best friend Seth’s new girl­friend is a vam­pire, some­thing Seth just had­n’t quite got­ten around to men­tion­ing. Seth explains that Severo (whose name she does­n’t yet know) is prob­a­bly a were­wolf, from her descrip­tion of him and his actions. Severo has, in the mean­time, start­ed stalk­ing Bel­la to pro­tect her from the vam­pires he’s sure will con­tin­ue to hunt her (for rea­sons unknown to him when he starts on this plan of action). After see­ing Seth with vam­pire Evie, with whom Severo has his­to­ry, Severo real­izes that Evie prob­a­bly sicced the vam­pires on Bel­la due to jeal­ousy.

One of the many, many things that both­ered me about this book is that Bel­la is sup­pos­ed­ly a web design­er, but she nev­er seems to work. She cer­tain­ly does­n’t have a lap­top, which would be de rigeur, and she lives in a ridicu­lous­ly upscale place (an apart­ment with its very own heat­ed pool?) for some­one in that pro­fes­sion. She can afford a lot of dance lessons, too — but her real source of income or cap­i­tal is nev­er explained. Appar­ent­ly Hauf was just look­ing for a pro­fes­sion that could be “done any­where” and some­one sug­gest­ed “web design­er” so she grabbed that and ran with it.

Of course, Severo is also sup­posed to “do some­thing with real estate” — how believ­able is that as a char­ac­ter detail? I guess we’re sup­posed to just accept that he’s rich, can spend his time as he pleas­es, and let every­thing else go with­out ques­tion. How is it that he has a Brown­ie for a house­keep­er? What’s the rela­tion­ship between Faery and were­wolves and vam­pires? Who knows?

The sto­ry does not get more believ­able as it goes on. Of course Bel­la falls in love with her stalk­er and trusts him com­plete­ly. There are evil vam­pires. There’s one good vam­pire, just to show that they aren’t uni­form­ly bad. But you can tell where Severo and Bel­la’s rela­tion­ship is going in the ear­li­est scenes, and that’s the most impor­tant part of the book, because it’s a romance. There are com­pli­ca­tions but they’ll be over­come, or it would­n’t be a romance.

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