Monday, December 13, 2010

Review: Heart of the Wolf (Heart of the Wolf #1) by Terry Spear

Synopsis (via Goodreads):
Their forbidden love may get them both killed.

Bella is a red werewolf, sole survivor of the fire that killed her entire pack.

Devlyn is a beta male werewolf in a pack of grays.

Forced to flee her adopted gray pack when the alpha male becomes a vicious threat, she struggles to live as a lone wolf, until Devlyn, the gray male who rescued her as a pup, comes to bring her home.

When a local red werewolf goes on a killing spree, Bella and Devlyn must flee the murderer, the police and their vengeful pack leader. With the full moon rising, and her heat upon her, Bella can't resist the pull to her destined mate, even if means Devlyn will have to face the wicked alpha male in a fight to the death...
My Thoughts: Oh, guys.  I don't like giving bad reviews.  I feel that when I find a book that I don't connect with that the fault lies with me somehow.  Especially when it's book about werewolves, which I have a particular fondness for.  After finishing this book and jumping online to read some reviews, I really do think I'm in the minority here because there are plenty of good reviews out there for it.  Unfortunately the book never grabbed me and I actually thought I wasn't going to be able to finish it at several points.

To start with, the writing felt very repetitive.  Bella's thoughts kept circling back and retreading the same ground again and again.  It really slowed the story down and kept me from caring what she was going through.  The story was also bogged down by the mythology- it felt thin and I honestly wasn't all that invested in it.

Now, one thing that really took me out of the story was the fact that Bella is 150 years old and still a virgin.  O_o  Although werewolves age slower than humans and she's the equivalent of a 21 year old, this is after she was determined to seduce a human male in the first few pages and was stopped by her Pack mates.  I'm sorry.  This pushed the realms of credibility for me.  She said at one point that she had never experienced the mating urge until her heat comes upon her at the start of the modern part of the story.  Here's my problem: it's called a SEX DRIVE and a not a sex amble-through-the-roses for a reason.  It pulls you.  It's one of the most fundamental parts of human (and animal) nature.  That drive to reproduce.  She had already shown an interest in sex when she was a teenager but she never explores that in 150 YEARS OF LIVING?  I just can't buy that.

One other thing that really got to me was the formatting for this story.  I picked it up as a free Kindle download and I've never seen the type of line spacing issues and lack of paragraph indentations that I ran across with this book.  I know this isn't the fault of the author and was probably just an unfortunate glitch, but added to my other issues with the book it kept me from losing myself in the story.  It was bad enough that there were several times where I had no idea who was talking because of the lack of paragraphs.

Guys, I love paranormal romances.  I love shapeshifters- werewolves in particular.  This book and I never connected.  Obviously, I'm one person in a sea of many and plenty of other people enjoyed it, so take that as you will.  The book is currently free and you can see for yourself if it's for you or not.

More books by Terry Spear

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1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Kelly, I've sent a note off to my editor about the formatting problem and they're checking into it.

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