Book Review: Bitten

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Easily the best werewolf story I've ever read…not that I've gone out of my way to read a ton of them, but still. I consistently say that good stories come down to characters, and I really sympathized with Elana. I almost said that I really liked her, but that's not entirely true. She's rough, hard, prone to temper-tantrums, and full of anger. The thing is, I got it. She should have been all of those things, given what she'd been through in her life. It made sense, and so while we would never be friends, I enjoyed reading her story.

Great world building — especially the wolves themselves. Straight-forward, wolf to man, silver bullets and the like are a semi-useful myth. They were wild, reclusive, and pack-oriented, all of which made sense. Elana is the only female werewolf in existence, because most wolves are born to it, a gene passed from father to son, never to a daughter. Werewolves could also be bitten, but most of those tended not to survive.

I did expect the fact that Elana was the only female werewolf to be more central to the plot when I started reading, but it was really a peripheral detail, part of the world and character, but not nearly as important as the rest of who she was — a wounded girl whose parents died when she was 5, raised by a string of foster parents, some of whom abused her…when she met Clayton, bitten in early childhood, struggling to grow up in a hostile world, he saw a reflection of himself in her.

I only had two small problems with the book

1. I didn't care for the prologue, and after reading it, I put it down for a couple of days, before friend's recommendations made me pick it up again. After that, and maybe because of that, it took me a couple of chapters to get into things at the beginning. Not too long, but I wouldn't say it got off to a quick start. If you pick it up, give it a few chapters.

2. Guns. Seriously. What is so wrong with guns? Seems like guns would solve a lot of supernatural problems. Just saying…

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys urban fantasy splashed with romance.

Rating: 4.5/5

Title: Bitten

Author: Kelley Armstrong

Genre: Urban Fantasy

ISBN: 0452286034

Published: September 7, 2004

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