Thank you for sending your book to Dear Author for review.   I totally loved the excerpt that was sent and I waited impatiently for the rest of the book to be sent.   I am a big fan of pack stories because I love the pack dynamics and the feralness of the characters.   While there are pack issues and appealing leads in this romance, I struggled to see the connections between the emotional leaps that the characters took.

Allison Kendall, a human, lives in the trailer next to Guy and Gracie Fontenot.   Guy is a werewolf with a quick temper and Gracie is free with her favors.   This volatile combination ends tragically when Guy kills Gracie and then comes after Allison who had been housing Dylan, Gracie’s son and the boy Guy had called his own for five years.   That night changes Allie’s life forever.

When Dylan grows older, he shows signs of being an alpha wolf. He needs a pack.   Allie and Dylan’s uncle Seth receive an invitation for Dylan and Seth to meet with Cade MacDougall, an Alpha of the Rocky Mountain Pack headquarted in Fremont, Colorado.   Cade’s pack contained a number of Alphas, lones and outcasts – the perfect place for lone wolf Seth and the burgeoning alpha wolf Dylan.

The worldbuilding in this story is not the basic werewolf created by disease but is actually tied to old Norse legends wherein the Old Norse word for wolf translates into Valkyrie Horse.   Valkyries and their mounts were metaphors for the ravens and wolves that would scavenge the battlefield. (It should be noted that I only know of this legend because I played Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Underworld about a month previous which was based on Norse mythology).   The wolves in Yours, Mine and Howls are touched by Eir, a norse goddess, and Cade’s line, in particular, is favored by Eir. I found the norse touched were mythology interesting and appreciated the freshness.

The real problem, as I mentioned in the beginning, was the emotional arcs.   Allie and Cade meet and move from lust to love in pages without meaningful transitions. We go from Allie being irritated that Cade and another Pack member finds her sexually attractive after she overhears them talking about her assets, but then in the next scene, when faced with Cade’s glorious good looks, she is breathless and agog.   Cade himself decides no sex with women in the Pack, particularly around his young daughter.     Cade’s intentions are soon forgotten.   I wished I had some scenes in which I could have seen the emotional transition being made.     There lacked a smooth flow from emotional scene to emotional scene, making the book almost episodic in feel, like I was reading a series of vignettes strung together.

I didn’t really enjoy the protrayal of Allie.   She’s physically gifted with heightened senses and preternatural speed and strength yet she is always blushing and crying around Cade. She is actually referred to as an alpha in her own right and regularly yells at Cade.   Despite this, I felt she came off as weak and posturing.   I had wished that she had a little more self confidence and appreciation of herself as a woman and an individual who had pretty much raised Dylan and kept her little tribe together for thirteen years.

Cade was a fairly typical Alpha male pack leader whose primary characteristics appeared to be portrayed through his uncertain pursuit of Allie. I did think that Cade’s four year old daughter was adorable as were his interactions with the daughter.

There is an intriguing story behind Allie’s power and a connection between Cade and Allie that is bound in myth.   Unfortunately, much of that story is told through long bursts of dialogue in the middle and toward the end.   In the end, I didn’t feel like this story lived up to its initial promise. Your voice is strong and I am ready to try out your next story. C

Best regards,

Jane

Book Link | Kindle | nook |
Sony| Samhain

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Cole takes very traditional tropes and reverses them completely. For example, Cole’s books are female-centric with the female myths playing larger roles. Instead of the brotherhood or the male cadre of warriors, you ave a group of sword wielding, smart mouthed, head chopping Valkryries that like sparkly things, nail polish and video games or devious witches that are so beautiful they have to spell themselves to protect others from their personal glory.

Cole takes it even farther by flipping the hero into the traditional heroine type. As Robin blogged over at Reader’s Gab, so often heroines are solitary creatures with few friends and and not much of a support system; most importantly, the heroine is generally inexperienced.

So while Cole’s heroines are the ones with the constant fellowship and support, Cole’s heroes are isolated for various reasons. Lachlain was captured for hundreds of years [A Hunger Like No Other]. Bowen was emotionally stunted because he had lost his mate [Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night]. Sebastian purposefully isolated himself by avoiding his brothers and seeking comfort in scholarly work. In Cole’s newest two books to be released back to back in May and June, the heroes are isolated again. Conrad, the hero of Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, is said to have been “alone and friendless for centuries.” In Dark Desires after Dusk, Cadeon Woede is blamed for the loss of his brother’s crown, putting him in disgust to others. “Yet as Rydstrom mounted his stallion, his soldiers gazed at Cadeon with an expression of hatred, tinged with disgust. They clearly thought Cadeon should die.I had best get used to that look, he thought. Even at his young age, he knew he’d be seeing it for the rest of his life.”

Cole’s heroes are often sexually inexperienced. They’ve had few or no partners. Lachlain abstained from consorting with women in his clan because he was sensitive to how that might make his future mate uncomfortable. He searched out jewelry and gifts, not for any current mistress or lover, but for his future mate.

The vampires cannot even get it up until they are “blooded” by their “Bride.” In a sense, these men are completely manless without the right female which is yet another reversal of the trope that posits a woman is only complete with a man on one arm and a baby in the other.

Sebastian was a bumbler with women before he was turned into a vampire and had pangs that he might not be competent enough for Kaderin. “Sebastian’s forgettable-’or disastrous-’experiences had not prepared him in any way for Kaderin’s passion.” He compared himself unfavorably with his brother: “He could never have compared with Murdoch’s experience, and he’d dreaded looking down as he took a woman and knowing that she was thinking the same.”

In Dark Needs, there is a hilarious scene early on in the book where Sebastian tries to give Conrad a reason to live. He tries to sell Conrad on the majestic experience it is to be blooded. Neomi, the heroine ghost, is sitting in the room at this time, intently listening to everything that is going on. Conrad is becoming increasingly embarrassed as Sebastian proceeds to state baldly, to Neomi’s great interest, how few women Conrad probably has had. “Is that all she sees him as? A madman to be ignored? Or worse – pitied? That is how she sees him. A filthy, sexually inexperienced lunatic.” Neomi is the one with sexual experience. At one point, Conrad questions “Does nothing abash you?” Cadeon, in Dark Desires, is more sexually experienced but he is so enraptured in his mate that when he first meets her, he stutters and stammers and she dismisses him which, of course, makes him want her all the more.

Cole plays on the innocence of her men, but never fully emasculates them. She relies, in part, on their great physical strength, their tremendous good looks, and their machismo. I find her heroes to be an exaggeration of the stereotypical male and while they appear alpha, the truth is that these men are pussycats that are willing to devote their lives to a woman and to making that woman happy. You get the sense that if Kaderin the Coldhearted wanted Sebastian to wear a skirt, he would don it with pleasure and enough swagger to make her swoon. The innocent, yet alpha male, is a tightrope that Cole expertly navigates.

Because despite the bumbling, the sexual innocence, the emotional impairment of these heroes, the men are not emasculated nor are they overpowering. I think that Cole gets away with this because her story is a paranormal one. Her Valkryies and Witches are smart, powerful, beautiful, and unafraid of their own attractiveness. They can see through the facade. They know their power over men and thus the excess manliness only serves to heighten the chemistry.

Cole’s writing is very smart and very female centric in a genre that all too often makes it all about the men. Kind of like this article. In celebration of Cole’s writing and her back to back releases, Dark Needs at Night’s Edge and Dark Desires After Dusk, I’m giving away 15 copies of Dark Needs at Night’s Edge. They are currently sitting on my counter and I am anxious to send them out. So go forth and comment. I’ll randomly select you to win a copy of Dark Needs so you too can enjoy Kresley Cole and one of her innocent, beleaguered men.

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