Also, I feel so sorry for all those male cats because of the horrible gender balance. They should seriously get one of those sperm-sorter machines and make sure half the babies in the nex generations are girls.

Fayth- Oooh, look at me, I’m so rebellious, give me room to breathe! Seriously, the rebellious, listen-to-no-one female lead has been done a billion times. Add points for sheer stupidity— your family is in danger and all you want to do is leave? What’s wrong with you? GROW UP!

Marc- Yeah, never seen a jealous ex-lover who still wants the female lead before. Never seen that. Ever.

Jace- Whenever I read about him, in my head, he looks like Jase from Big Brother 5. Anyway, with a book filled to the brim with cliches, there HAS to be a second (third if you count the quickly forgotten Andrew) love interest for Marc to hate and to flirt with Fayth. This character has as much depth as… um… something with no depth!

Greg- Hmmm, a strong, powerful father who rules the Pride with strength, power, and conviction… One of the most powerful werecats in all the land who happens to have a rebellious daughter. AAAAAAAAAARGH!

Sometimes I think this book will make my head a-splode. What kills me is that it HAS a decent premise, and a fairly strong mythos around it. I totally got into the whole werecat storyline, but with characters this uninteresting and generic, it kinda spoils it for me. A tip for the first time writer, and I know it’s been said before— avoid cliches like the plague. Seriously, you clearly have a good imagination, but your execution is flawed. Go back to the drawing board, and dream up some imaginative, interesting characters for us.

I admit when I first started this book, I liked the writers style. But it soon became apparent that this was a very derivative work. She borrows too much from Armstrong for my comfort level. And Fayth was TSTL. I wanted her to be taken down a peg or two and it never happened. I can understand a character being spoiled at the beginning… But remaining that way doesn’t work for me.

I liked her male characters though. Maybe another heroine would make the book shine.

I also felt the ecology of the werecats didn’t make any sense. Why would these people not fight more over who got the female cats when there were so few of them? The longterm monogamy wasn’t very catlike Plus the non alpha males seemed too complacent to me. I would imagine they’d be dueling every chance they got for available women. Honestly I’d like to have seen a more catlike ecology…

Regarding Fayth, I think the characters insistance on ‘independance’ even though it jeapordized her family and her life made her TSTL. I think I prefer heroines to be a tad more loyal… Her family had paid for school, grad school and this woman wanted for nothing… It was difficult to feel sorry for her… Plus despite her being ‘groomed’ for leadership I felt she lacked the qualities of a good leader… To be honest I felt sorry for Marc being saddled with her.=)

Good
*world-building
*integration of knowledge of felines into “Pride” structure
*1st Person Narrative puts you in the action and makes explanations of “Pride” structure flow easily
* It is well written with clearly unique characters (no worries about getting the leading man confused with the villain or the best friend which always annoys me in the majority of paranormal romances. But then again, this is urban fantasy right?)

Bad
*A little long (I took a 5 min breather 2/3 of the way through.)
*For most of the book, Faythe is all whine no spine when it comes to her “independence”. I was disappointed as it doesn’t fit with the book exterior’s depiction of her as a mature independent graduate student…but it does fit with a 22 year old indulged female in a Pride full of male werecats.

This book is essentially a coming of age novel. It is going to resonate best with a young (18-25), Goth/Fantasy, audience. I thought it was paced well, and fun to read though I did shake my head at Faythe’s stubborness sometimes. But if she was not TSTL – there wouldn’t be a book to read in the first place…I don’t think it deserves a D.

I will say I wonder if the issue you had with this book was simply that Faythe was acting her age. Many of her arguments sound more like the ones my seventeen year old sister offers when she wants something. There is a level of blindness to looking outside of herself but she seems to have glimmers of a clue as to her own behavior and trying to look at things from a different viewpoint. I do believe that there would have been more maturing in 5 years of college than was displayed in the book. However, school remains a protective environment for many. I would be interested in seeing what happens as she matures.

As for the college boyfriend, I am not shocked she forgot about him. They had only been dating for 4 months and relationships can be transient. In the midst of all the pride drama he probably seemed like the least of her problems. But did anyone else not feel like he was a little stalkerish? Pushing to meet her parents like that? Is that really normal?.

shame im looking for another decent sires of books along the same line…. not here then.