#CBR7 Review #23: Bitten by Kelly Armstrong

Another one from the pile my friend handed to me when I asked for book recommendations! And a pretty enjoyable read, too, given how much I like werewolves these days (*cough* Teen Wolf). But I once again fall into this problem that I’ve been having lately in regards to protagonists: they just aren’t connecting with me. That is not to say that I like nothing about Elena, the main character in Bitten. But, she just seems to flip flop a bit to the point where I’m not sure if certain things are in fact out of character or if I just don’t truly understand her in some ways and am therefore seeing them as such. That’s my problem, though, and I don’t think everyone would feel the same as me.

Bitten is about a woman named Elena, who is the only female werewolf in the world (special snowflake sirens screech in the distance!! she’s a hot commodity, y’all!). But let’s not get caught up in what initially made me roll my eyes. Elena has been living a pretty decent human life as a wolf without a pack for a while, but gets called back to her old pack life when some violent acts start to occur in the area around where her former pack lives. Elena falls easily back into this life, and there the internal struggle begins as she is faced with decisions regarding human versus werewolf life, and her new boyfriend versus her old werewolf lover, Clay, with whom she has so much history. The violence in the area around her old pack is related to the threat of some outside, pack-less wolves (“mutts” as they are called), which soon begins to threaten the lives of Elena and her wolf family (I mean, that’s basically what a pack is, right?).

I won’t go too much more into details, as it’s always fun when not too much is given away. But the story itself is bloody and intriguing, and the characters all seem to be quite colorful and interesting (if somewhat one-dimensional in the case of a few). All in all, it was enjoyable for a werewolf novel, and I am interested in reading the next in the series. There is just that issue I had with Elena herself throughout the book. Something about her didn’t resonate with me, but that’s okay, as it happens sometimes. Though I did picture her as something of a mix between Ronda Rousey and Natalie Dormer, which certainly helped in coming up with a picture of her in my mind.

At the end of the day, I might pick up another one of these books one day, as Armstrong has a pretty concise yet engaging voice in her writing. It just might not be the first thing on my list to continue with (I just have so many other things now that I need to read and/or continue!).

[Be sure to visit the Cannonball Read main site!]

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