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gillianw's review against another edition
3.0
https://justlovereviews.com/2017/02/13/worst-werewolf-jacqueline-rohrbach/#more-18645
2.5/5 stars
There are two things you should know before you read this book. 1 – this is not a romance, not in any way, shape or form, and 2 – the blurb is extremely misleading.
Now, I can accept the first point because I happen to love UF (Urban Fantasy) books. To me, UF and werewolves always seem to be a more natural fit than Romance and werewolves, because I like my shifters to have a real sense of danger. The less trustworthy they are around the humans, the more I like them. The second point, though, that’s a little tougher to swallow. The blurb is the thing that draws you in and helps you decide if this is the book for you. If the blurb only reflects the first 25% of the story, you might feel like you’re not getting what was promised. You might even feel misled.
I felt misled.
The Worst Werewolf is not the story in the blurb. It’s not the story of Tovin and Garvey, two ill-fated lovers in a dangerous time. Tovin and Garvey are barely an afterthought. In fact, they spend the majority of this book apart from each other. You can see why I felt like the blurb was akin to false advertising.
So, what is this book about? It’s actually comprised of several interconnected storylines, complicated werewolf pack politics, a large cast of characters (most of whom were introduced in the first 9% of the book) and whole lot of world building. In other words, there is A LOT of stuff going on in this book that wasn’t even hinted at in the blurb.
I felt like every time I turned a page, a new person or event was being introduced. And yeah, I get that the first book in any UF series always seems a wee bit bogged down in detail, but you can’t overwhelm the reader either. Reading this book felt like getting A Game of Thrones worth of characters and political intrigue condensed into 150 pages. I had to start taking notes to write down character names, pack names and their connection to one another, otherwise nothing would have made sense.
To be honest, it was sheer stubbornness that kept me reading this book because I felt like bailing several times before I finally got to the end. But just when I thought I was getting a handle on things, the book went and confused me all over again, introducing some sort of portal protected by werewolves on one side, humans on the other and some very creepy vampires locked in between.
And after all that, it had to end on a cliffhanger.
Reader, I nearly screamed.
Look, this book isn’t terrible. In fact, there are some interesting storylines at play. I just feel like it should either have been longer, giving more time for the story to play out, or pared down and allowed to spread out over several installments. But as it is, well, you shouldn’t have to create a spreadsheet for yourself to keep up with the characters and how they relate to one another. Some people might find working in an Excel a fun way to spend the evening. Me? Not so much.
If you love UF novels and if you love complicated storylines and a cast of interestingly named characters, then, by all means, give this one a shot. At least you can consider yourself armed with the knowledge that you are not getting the book noted in the summary.
But for the love of all that is holy, won’t someone please fix that blurb??!
I received an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review.
2.5/5 stars
There are two things you should know before you read this book. 1 – this is not a romance, not in any way, shape or form, and 2 – the blurb is extremely misleading.
Now, I can accept the first point because I happen to love UF (Urban Fantasy) books. To me, UF and werewolves always seem to be a more natural fit than Romance and werewolves, because I like my shifters to have a real sense of danger. The less trustworthy they are around the humans, the more I like them. The second point, though, that’s a little tougher to swallow. The blurb is the thing that draws you in and helps you decide if this is the book for you. If the blurb only reflects the first 25% of the story, you might feel like you’re not getting what was promised. You might even feel misled.
I felt misled.
The Worst Werewolf is not the story in the blurb. It’s not the story of Tovin and Garvey, two ill-fated lovers in a dangerous time. Tovin and Garvey are barely an afterthought. In fact, they spend the majority of this book apart from each other. You can see why I felt like the blurb was akin to false advertising.
So, what is this book about? It’s actually comprised of several interconnected storylines, complicated werewolf pack politics, a large cast of characters (most of whom were introduced in the first 9% of the book) and whole lot of world building. In other words, there is A LOT of stuff going on in this book that wasn’t even hinted at in the blurb.
I felt like every time I turned a page, a new person or event was being introduced. And yeah, I get that the first book in any UF series always seems a wee bit bogged down in detail, but you can’t overwhelm the reader either. Reading this book felt like getting A Game of Thrones worth of characters and political intrigue condensed into 150 pages. I had to start taking notes to write down character names, pack names and their connection to one another, otherwise nothing would have made sense.
To be honest, it was sheer stubbornness that kept me reading this book because I felt like bailing several times before I finally got to the end. But just when I thought I was getting a handle on things, the book went and confused me all over again, introducing some sort of portal protected by werewolves on one side, humans on the other and some very creepy vampires locked in between.
And after all that, it had to end on a cliffhanger.
Reader, I nearly screamed.
Look, this book isn’t terrible. In fact, there are some interesting storylines at play. I just feel like it should either have been longer, giving more time for the story to play out, or pared down and allowed to spread out over several installments. But as it is, well, you shouldn’t have to create a spreadsheet for yourself to keep up with the characters and how they relate to one another. Some people might find working in an Excel a fun way to spend the evening. Me? Not so much.
If you love UF novels and if you love complicated storylines and a cast of interestingly named characters, then, by all means, give this one a shot. At least you can consider yourself armed with the knowledge that you are not getting the book noted in the summary.
But for the love of all that is holy, won’t someone please fix that blurb??!
I received an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review.
the_novel_approach's review
3.0
~ 3.5 Stars
The voice in this piece was fantastic, specifically Garvey’s, a desperate half-breed werewolf. He’s a self-proclaimed monster who desires nothing more in life than to fall in lust with, chase, and eat his prey. It’s a sort of simple existence I think most humans can relate to on a primal level. Most animals enjoy eating, and Garvey seems to relish in the hunt. Some may call it sadism, but I’ve seen cats play with birds before they eat them. I will admit the outlook looks rather bleak when you’re the bird….
A sizable amount of this story was also spent on a main character not mentioned the blurb, specifically a sort of Liberace-style alpha werewolf named Lavario, who was rather pathetically lonely (things quickly become not good for him). He’s also the ‘worst werewolf’ the title refers to, so it’s doubly interesting he’s not mentioned. I do have suspicions there will be more than one worst werewolf in this series, but that’s just a guess.
Another intriguing aspect of this novel was the worldbuilding. Humans live in their own world, oblivious to monsters, except for those that are taken to eat, or, in Tovin’s case, enslaved as pets. The justification of monsters taking humans as pets unnervingly parallels the human justification for keeping animals as pets and eating them as food. It was rather fascinating.
Despite my great fun with Garvey’s voice and a few thinky thoughts, I did have some glaring problems with the story. The blurb and tags led me to believe this was a dark paranormal, with a relationship between Garvey and Tovin. There isn’t. There isn’t a romance, or even the threads of what we could possibly jumble into a romance. Furthermore, even though quite a few of our characters seem to be on the rainbow spectrum somewhere, none of that had any bearing on the story whatsoever. You could have made them all straight, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Honestly, I’m not sure what to think of that. On one hand, I’m always saying characters don’t need to show they’re gay to be gay, but on the other, I’m a bit bemused as to what this story is actually about.
Additionally, this isn’t really a dark paranormal so much as horror. And there’s a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger really drives the nail into the coffin as far as genre goes, and I was more than a little miffed that horror wasn’t called out in the genre tags, because it should have been. Not because I don’t like horror, because I do, but because it totally changes the tone and expectations.
Between starting off in Garvey’s head, and then rapidly switching into Lavario’s and Tovin’s, the pace of the plot was slowed down enough to where we don’t actually get to the point where the blurb starts until much later. Not only that, but the fact that we don’t have a complete character arc for at least Lovario or Tovin by the end of the novel bothered me quite a bit.
There were so many pacing and plotting issues it’s hard for me to recommend this work by itself. The fantastic voice of Garvey and the feeble hope I had for Lavario were really the only things keeping me invested, but I’m going to need something more if I’m going to read on. I wish I would have waited until the series was finished. I feel as if 100% of my issues could have been avoided. I would have bought the bundle! Or, putting two books together to make a longer book would have been sufficient, even if the price went up a bit because of it. I’m desperately hoping this isn’t going to be one of those protracted series where we are stuck with cliffhanger after cliffhanger, but I’m not holding my breath. Oh well. You’ve been suitably warned, and then some.
Read this if you are a diehard werewolf fan (the murderous kind), if you want a glimpse of unique voice and worldbuilding in the paranormal horror genre, or when the series is finished.
Reviewed by Ben for The Novel Approach
The voice in this piece was fantastic, specifically Garvey’s, a desperate half-breed werewolf. He’s a self-proclaimed monster who desires nothing more in life than to fall in lust with, chase, and eat his prey. It’s a sort of simple existence I think most humans can relate to on a primal level. Most animals enjoy eating, and Garvey seems to relish in the hunt. Some may call it sadism, but I’ve seen cats play with birds before they eat them. I will admit the outlook looks rather bleak when you’re the bird….
A sizable amount of this story was also spent on a main character not mentioned the blurb, specifically a sort of Liberace-style alpha werewolf named Lavario, who was rather pathetically lonely (things quickly become not good for him). He’s also the ‘worst werewolf’ the title refers to, so it’s doubly interesting he’s not mentioned. I do have suspicions there will be more than one worst werewolf in this series, but that’s just a guess.
Another intriguing aspect of this novel was the worldbuilding. Humans live in their own world, oblivious to monsters, except for those that are taken to eat, or, in Tovin’s case, enslaved as pets. The justification of monsters taking humans as pets unnervingly parallels the human justification for keeping animals as pets and eating them as food. It was rather fascinating.
Despite my great fun with Garvey’s voice and a few thinky thoughts, I did have some glaring problems with the story. The blurb and tags led me to believe this was a dark paranormal, with a relationship between Garvey and Tovin. There isn’t. There isn’t a romance, or even the threads of what we could possibly jumble into a romance. Furthermore, even though quite a few of our characters seem to be on the rainbow spectrum somewhere, none of that had any bearing on the story whatsoever. You could have made them all straight, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Honestly, I’m not sure what to think of that. On one hand, I’m always saying characters don’t need to show they’re gay to be gay, but on the other, I’m a bit bemused as to what this story is actually about.
Additionally, this isn’t really a dark paranormal so much as horror. And there’s a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger really drives the nail into the coffin as far as genre goes, and I was more than a little miffed that horror wasn’t called out in the genre tags, because it should have been. Not because I don’t like horror, because I do, but because it totally changes the tone and expectations.
Between starting off in Garvey’s head, and then rapidly switching into Lavario’s and Tovin’s, the pace of the plot was slowed down enough to where we don’t actually get to the point where the blurb starts until much later. Not only that, but the fact that we don’t have a complete character arc for at least Lovario or Tovin by the end of the novel bothered me quite a bit.
There were so many pacing and plotting issues it’s hard for me to recommend this work by itself. The fantastic voice of Garvey and the feeble hope I had for Lavario were really the only things keeping me invested, but I’m going to need something more if I’m going to read on. I wish I would have waited until the series was finished. I feel as if 100% of my issues could have been avoided. I would have bought the bundle! Or, putting two books together to make a longer book would have been sufficient, even if the price went up a bit because of it. I’m desperately hoping this isn’t going to be one of those protracted series where we are stuck with cliffhanger after cliffhanger, but I’m not holding my breath. Oh well. You’ve been suitably warned, and then some.
Read this if you are a diehard werewolf fan (the murderous kind), if you want a glimpse of unique voice and worldbuilding in the paranormal horror genre, or when the series is finished.
Reviewed by Ben for The Novel Approach
djwudi's review
3.0
Considering I don't think of myself as much of an Urban Fantasy reader, I sure keep finding myself reading it. :) Interesting world building here, with three werewolf clans and their political maneuvering. The heroes aren't always particularly likable, but that's not a fault, just a reflection of who they are as characters, either scheming or cocky (or both) werewolf or abducted human dealing with their situation. Not a bad start to a series at all.
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