Raised By Wolves Book 2

Barnes' debut novel, Raised by Wolves, has an intriguing storyline and puts some interesting twists in were mythology. Fresh story lines in the world of YA paranormal romance are becoming rare especially when vamps or wolves are concerned, so I'm happy to point this one out.

It's about a girl Bryn, whose parents were killed by a rabid werewolf when she was very young, so a pack of Weres kill the rabid and take her in. She's assigned a guardian who acts as her mother and is the only other human in the pack. But Bryn is kind of the alpha's pet. Of course, she doesn't like that her parents died or that she's the only human teenage girl in a pack of mostly male Weres, but things go well until a new threat arrives.--Except Bryn doesn't know what the knew threat is. Neither do we for a couple of hundred pages, and this is what I didn't like. Honestly, the book was too slow for me. We're privy to this info that there seems to be a threat, but nothing threatening is happening and we don't know what the threat is for 200 pages.

As the idea of the threat develops Bryn meets Chase, a recently turned Wolf who's being stashed in a cage in the Alpha's basement. He's our lead guy. Yep. Just like that. --Threat we don't know what is, look for a threat, find a hot guy instead. And the romance is pretty much thrown together. Due to Bryn's wolf like instincts, and Chase's status as a were the author relies primarily on animalistic instincts to set up the romance. And for me at least, it didn't work. It felt rushed or thrown together. I had no idea what they saw in each other, other than physical attraction and some primate bond they thought they had.

It eventually all comes together and we're led to a satisfying ending. The writing style is interesting and the plot was good. I think the primary problems with the book were that it was often repetitive, there were some awkward phrasings and mechanical errors (though there were only a handful in 400 page book), but I think the threat could have come in sooner and the romance developed better. I'm not sure that I'll read the sequel. It will most likely depend on what's on my bookshelf at the time ;).