carolesrandomlife

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life.

I went into this book blindly. Yes, I decided that it was a good idea to jump into a well established series on book number 8. I knew that this was going to be a book about a werewolf (I figured that one out from the title) but that was about the extent of my knowledge. Believe it or not, everything actually turned out okay and I didn't feel too lost. I did find that there were a whole lot of characters to try to keep straight that I would guess long time readers of the series already know and love.

Toni is the oldest in a family with 11 children and she is the only one of her siblings who is not a prodigy. Toni's family of jackals is spending the summer in New York. Toni's role in the family is that of caretaker. She is able to manage all 10 of her difficult siblings which is quite the task. Her path crosses with the wolf across the street, Ricky Lee, very early in the story.

Ricky Lee is a werewolf who seems to keep finding himself in the position to help Toni out of various situations. He works in security and when things get dangerous, he takes it upon himself to keep Toni and her family safe. Ricky has tons of southern charm and an easy going attitude. Toni's difficult family doesn't even seem to faze this werewolf.

This book was filled with colorful characters. Ricky Lee was simply fantastic. He was just so lovable and funny and he brought a spark of excitement to every scene he was a part of. Toni was likeable and could handle her family's needs brilliantly but she seemed to panic with every problem not related to her family. Toni's family added a unique twist to the story and I thought they were fun most of the time. I just loved Bo from the hockey team. He was probably the most difficult member of the team but Toni was able to deal with him quite easily since he reminded her of her siblings. Toni's friend, Livy, was just plain awesome.

I liked this book but I didn't love it. The romance between Toni and Ricky Lee was rather predictable and I felt that the chemistry between the pair was lacking. I think I would have enjoyed this book more if it kept its focus on Toni and Ricky Lee but there was so many other things going on that it was hard to keep up at times. As I already mentioned, this book had a lot of characters to keep up with which took away from the flow of the story for me.

There were a lot of really strong points in this book. I loved the humor in the story. I really liked that the plot took a few turns that were completely unexpected. The final third of the book just flew by for me because it just full of excitement. I found that I really enjoyed this author's style of writing.

I would recommend this book to fans of paranormal romance. I do think that I will have to check out this series from the beginning because there were a lot of things that I liked. I am willing to bet that regular readers of this series will find this book quite enjoyable.

I received an advance reader edition of this book from Kensington Books via NetGalley for the purpose of providing an honest review.