Publisher: Plume Books
Release Date: September 7, 2004
Format: Mass Paperback
Pages: 436 pages
Source: Used Book Sale
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Review Date: February 16, 2014
Rating: 4 bookmarks
Synopsis: Elena Michaels is a werewolf. She tries to be human, but the man whose bite changed her existence forever, and his legacy, continue to haunt her. Thrown into a desperate war for survival that tests her allegiance to a secret clan of werewolves, Elena must reconsider who and what she is.
| I've had this book on my shelf for a long time now. I picked up books one and two of this series from a charity used book sale last year. I'd heard a few good things about this author, so I thought I'd give the series a try. I'm glad I did. In all honesty, I only recently got motivated to read this book because I inadvertently watched most of the first episode of the new show on the Syfy channel, also called Bitten. All the sudden midway through the episode I thought, wait, I have this book! So I promptly stopped watching the show and picked up Bitten. Having finished the book and caught up on all the episodes, I can tell that one season will be equal to one book. So far the TV series is pretty good and for the most part it follows the book pretty closely. But who know how long that similarity will last. I've included the video preview in case you're curious. Back to the book. I must admit, this book was a slow start for me. It was so slow that I was starting to question the high ratings. I wondered if I was reading the same book! But, in the end, I'm so very glad that I pushed through. The payoff was worth it. I finished the last third of the book in a sprint. I stayed up reading until 1 am to finish. |  |
I like that Elena is a very strong chic. Elena is a woman and a werewolf, thanks to being bitten. She hates it. She wants nothing other than to blend in with the humans and avoid the pack for the rest of her life. She's one of the stronger and most emotional heroines that I've read. But it's even more complicated than that. Elena gives in to her ex, Clay, and soon realizes that she may still be in love with him. This confuses things for her because she hates him for biting her. At the very least she's severely in lust with him. Overall, I like Clay and Elena together. They complement each other and yet they fight in the most contradictory way. One second Elena is ready to literally kill him, the next she's under his spell and she wants to jump him, if you know what I mean. And she does. Plenty.
| | Clay, misguided, intelligent, temperamental and sexy. Once I the layers of the story started to reveal themselves, I sort of felt bad for him. His is a perfect antihero. He's not bad per say, but he's not all good either. Neither is Elena, or the rest of the pack for that matter. They all seem like good people, but they have their pack mentality and that's how they deal with threats on their territory. The bad guy in this book wasn't very clear at first and that's because there were several. Not in a traditional way either. Revenge, murder and jealousy...it's all there and makes for good reading. |
I only had one issue with this book, as I mentioned earlier, Armstrong initially long time to get the story moving to a pace that I enjoy. Maybe she was just taking her time developing the story and characters. In a way it's good, but at the same time it made the reading very slow for me for the first third of the book.
What I found strange is that, this book is first in a long series of books, yet the end of this book felt like the end. No cliff hanger. Everything was pretty much tied up in a nice little bow. Who knows, maybe the author didn't know at the time that it would turn into a series.
I plan to leisurely continue with this series. Bitten was good, very good, but not in my "I can't put it down, I must read the next book right now!" sort of way. If you love urban fantasy series and you're looking for a new one to get into, I recommend Bitten. It'll give you something to bite into. Pun intended.
Happy Reading
~Tamara
