Bitten ~ Kelley Armstrong

• Title:  Bitten
• Author:  Kelley Armstrong
• Series:  The Women of the Otherworld, #1
• Genre:  Urban Fantasy
• Format:  eBook
• Source:  Own Copy
• Reviewed by: Sonja
• Rating:  2.5 out of 5

Description:  Elena Michaels is a werewolf. She tries to be human, but the man whose bite changed her existence forever, and his legacy, continue to haunt her. Thrown into a desperate war for survival that tests her allegiance to a secret clan of werewolves, Elena must reconsider who and what she is.

Review:  Warning: slight spoilers ahead.

This book started off like a house ‘a fire. Even though I was a little skeptical in the prologue that was written in present tense . . . I don’t typically like that . . . I was relieved to discover it reverted once the book actually started. But, the I enjoyed the original relationship of Elena and Philip and his family. I appreciated his reaction to her call to return ‘home’.

But then, I was very disappointed with this relationship. There should have been more to Philip than meets the eye – or why have him at all? Elena returns home and immediately falls into sex with her ex-fiancé, Clay. She makes a point of saying that it wasn’t really cheating because Clay was her past? Um, yes it is! And, it isn’t just once – it happens time and time again, even though he gives her more than one opportunity to walk away. So, why spend 2 chapters on Philip and his family? It seemed pointless and ultimately made Elena into such a cheater that it was absolutely impossible for me to root for her. Or any of her relationships.

The other thing that made her totally unrelatable was that she was such a whiner. She was constantly whining about even being a werewolf. She was constantly whining about Clay and what he did to her. Meanwhile, the entire pack treats her like a princess. And, not to belabor the point, but there is still Philip that she left back in Toronto that she remembers only when it is likely to move the plot in the author’s desired direction.

The book intrigued me with mysteries as to what and how and why and who is going on. I wanted to know more. Who was killing the members of the pack? Why were they killing them? There were a couple deaths that made me very sad. The pack dynamics were subtly different from others in the genre, in that things could only be done one way and mutts (those outside the packs) were almost always killed on sight. There wasn’t the alpha struggle thing going on – Jeremy just was the head guy. Ultimately, even these dynamics were boring.

I really did not enjoy this book. I do not plan to read further in the series unless the television series is really awesome. I did finish – and I can’t decide on 2 or 3 stars, so I will compromise at 2.5, which I will round down to 2. Because I should have liked it more than I did.