A review by slelswick
Claimed by J.R. Ward

2.0

I can't. I just can't with this book, y'all. Too much of the plot remains unexplained until the very end in that we-are-witholding-clues-the-whole-time-like-the-way-they-do-in-Murder-She-Wrote, but then wrap it up in the last seven minutes and all's well that ends well (except it doesn't...I'll explain later). Too much Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys sluething with a heaping side of blatant tampering with evidence by our heroine, Lydia, that was really off putting. Yeah, okay, she was trying to protect a wolf pack reintroduced into a wildlife perserve in upstate New York, but really? We're going to commit a felony by tampering with evidence/withholding evidence to protect the wolves when people are dying all around you under suspicious circumstances? Really? Really? Come to find out that our hero, Daniel, the loner and drifter and sexy McDreamy works for a shadow government agency. (He isn't the shapeshifter afterall, btw. It's--surprise!--Lydia, who shapeshifts into her true form, a wolf, to protect Daniel at the deanouemont. Earlier in the novel, a hiker is killed on the wildlife perserve and now that this novel is over, are we to assume it was Lydia who killed the poor man in her wolf shapeshifter guise? We, the dear gentle readers slogging through this quagmire of a murder plot / amatuer detective sluething / evidenc tampering or withholding aren't given any clues that this poor hiker was up to no good? Was he there to poison the wolves? We don't know; after all, at the end of the novel, it's revealed that Lydia's very own coworker was responsibile for poisoining the wolves released on the wildlife preserve. So, um....yeah, no. I love me some BDB. I love me some Warden. But I just can't with this spinoff series. The sexy times do not make up for all the other bullshit.