Published: 6th February 2018
Source: Purchased
Genre: Romance, Paranormal
My Rating:
For three days out of thirty, when the moon is full and her law is iron, the Great North Pack must be wild.
If she returns to her Pack, the stranger will die.
But if she stays…
Silver Nilsdottir is at the bottom of her Pack’s social order, with little chance for a decent mate and a better life. Until the day a stranger stumbles into their territory, wounded and beaten, and Silver decides to risk everything on Tiberius Leveraux. But Tiberius isn’t all he seems, and in the fragile balance of the Pack and wild, he may tip the destiny of all wolves…
Welcome to a review of another book I got from New York (turns out my reviews for the past few books on the blog have been New York acquisitions but I was totally on to some winners so I’m not complaining). And what a surprising read this one was! I think I only picked up this because I’d been following the @JenReadsRitas account and saw her make a couple of comments about this being a good romance about wolves and it had good world-building and I had it on the radar. When I stumbled across it in a Barnes and Noble it snuck into my hand on the way to the till and I figured it was a cheap easy buy, easy to justify to myself.
Honestly, I was uncertain when I first began reading. The writing felt stilted and oddly formal for the modern day setting it had and I continually felt lost with names and the language and terminology used by the wolves. I did find that as the book progressed I found my footing with these things and I stopped having to flick back and refresh myself and instead stayed in the moment with the story. As I learnt more about the world of these wolves and how things worked I did get it. I think how much I loved the MCs Ti and Silver helped too. I wanted to know more about them so I made the effort to figure out the hierarchy and pack system. I admit I was glad Ti was as much of a newbie to the wolf pack as I was otherwise I’d have been totally lost.
I think it was probably Silver who really made me love this book. I was utterly intrigued by her as the wolves in this book are far more drawn to their animal nature than you see a lot of the time in paranormal and urban fantasy. And Silver was even more drawn to her animal nature. You could tell she saw herself as more of a wolf than a human a lot of the time and she saw that aspect in many of those around her. I think this was probably because all of the pack turn for three days a month and they live as wolves in the land they own. She couldn’t ignore her animal side as it was how she lived for part of her time each month and in high-stress situations, she became a wolf, probably partially due to the ease of processing information in that form. I really respected her character, though, because she has spent her whole life seeing herself as less. When she changed to a wolf her one leg came out of joint and she was not as strong and agile as the other wolves which led to her landing at the bottom of the pack hierarchy. As such, she knew to cherish what she had and appreciated what she was going as she was so used to being thought of last. When this stranger, Ti, comes along and offers to be paired with her she knows it could lead to her losing everything, but she also cannot risk falling even lower in the pack and she can see the strength Ti possessed. She just has to show him everything involved with being a wolf and part of the pack to get her position and help him be welcomed as well. Which would be fine if he was a wolf but he’s a shifter, something hated by so many wolves. I won’t go into the ins and outs as it’s explained far better in the book, but seeing Silver try and get Ti to understand the pack and want to be part of it was brilliant. This was probably the genius part of making this the first book in the series. You learn the world of the wolves right along with Ti and it’s brilliant. This book truly does have excellent world-building and such an original concept of werewolves.
One thing I do want to grumble about is the pacing. A few times I found myself flicking back because I thought I’d missed a scene. Not all scene changes were fluid and between chapters, there was occasionally a big jump in time and it made me think I’d missed reading something. I understand why time shifted rapidly because those middle parts would probably have been really boring, but I feel like it could have been done a little better. And I found the time jumps stopped the book from dragging. I just wanted to spend a little bit more time with the characters and their journey rather than the story as a whole. The pacing didn’t ruin the book for me, I just noticed it and I don’t want to notice these things.
Overall, this was a great book and one which I really enjoyed. I plan on buying the next two books in the series soon because this really was a great take on werewolves and the world-building was genius. I want to explore this world from other characters perspectives and see what will happen next with this pack.
Have you had a good impulse buy lately? And what was the last book a chance comment on Twitter made you buy? And most importantly, if you’ve read this what did you think?
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