Seduced by the Wolf

Okay, this book is called Seduced by the Wolf by Terry Spear.  The title is a little cheesy, but I shouldn't complain too much because I probably couldn't come up with a better one either.  :-)  :-)

I have to tell you that I have mixed feelings about this book.  It started off really good and it was very interesting and had my attention.  The characters were good, the story was interesting, and the writing exceptional.  But once the seduction happened and the writer started adding those descriptive sex parts, the story kind of fell apart.  If the writer is that good at writing fantasy fiction, she should have made this book a true fantasy fiction book.  The seduction and the sex parts were okay if you like reading that kind of stuff, but the overall story kind of starting falling apart from that point.

The story went from being fun and exciting to read to all of the sudden being an "oh gosh, you've got to be kidding" type of ridiculousness.  Now I'm not trying to say that I could have done better, because I know that I couldn't, but the story just didn't have the same... oh, could I say quality here? - that the first half of the book had.  All of the sudden you have this character that is very strong and almost impressive that she's been able to accomplish all she had alone or with only a little bit of help.  I can almost say that I admired Cassie and her approach to her studying wolf packs and her work.  But then she runs into an alpha wolf, Leidolf, and her whole personality changes!  Okay, yeah, she's in total lust with this guy, but all of the sudden she almost turned into a ditz.  Yeah, I'm being mean here, but if anyone else read this book, please feel free to prove me wrong.

Then you have Leidolf, former loner wolf that all of the sudden finds himself the leader of a wolf pack and finds himself in total lust with Cassie.  His character was not all that strong to begin with - and I'm talking about him being kind of wishy washy - so I can see where a strong, no-b.s. personality like Cassie's could change him.  His changes I can see happening... having a soft spine to being almost a jerk for wanting to be protective over his new mate.  But it was done in such a cheesy way that it got on my nerves.

Okay, I need to change my approach here because I don't like concentrate on negatives here.  I do want to mention again that the first half of this book was awesome.  I liked how the writer developed the story and characters and gave me a good sense to who they were.  I think I'd go looking for more books by this writer is the book was written like the first half.  I also think that this author has way more potential if she stuck to pure fantasy fiction.  Sure, it is possible to still have fantasy fiction and romance in the same book without all of the descriptive sex.  Look at Patricia Briggs and her Mercy Thompson series.  I can see this writer going to that level and I'm sure that her books would do really well.  Take a strong character like Cassie, put her in similar situations like in this book (without the whole Leidolf part) and you'd have a new series to enjoy.  Cassie knows how to kick butt and is very passionate about her work.  She does whatever it takes to accomplish her goals even if it means stealing a car and running around in the woods with an injured arm.  But the writer will need to be careful to not change Cassie too much (or a Cassie equivalent) like she did in this book because by the end I kind of lost interest in her.  Her personality changed too much once she became Leidolf's mate.  If I were to compare Mercy Thompson, she didn't really change too much after she married her mate, Adam.  Now, it has been a while since I've read the Mercy Thompson books so I could be wrong here... so please let me know if you think I am.  I'd love to compare notes.  :-)

If you've had the opportunity to read anything else by this writer, I'd love to hear what you think.  As I feel right now, I don't think I will look for anything else by this writer.  I'm kind of tired of the whole love-sick, give everything up for the guy type of romance novels right now.  I think that is why I've taken a liking to my new favorite character, Riley Jensen.  :-)  :-)  Well, I just downloaded four new free books from Amazon that I'd like to eventually read, but it's not going to happen if I spend too much time on this computer.  :-)  :-)