Review: Definitely Thought Provoking
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 23, 2013
SPOILERS AHEAD!  You are warned:Saving Margaret (Vegas Mates Series) (#2)is the second in the Vegas Mates Series.  The first,Chasing Sam (Vegas Mates Series, Novella) (#1)should be read before this one.  It contains background on the secondary characters, the world, and just what's happening to shifters in Las Vegas.  It's important to understand why the Council of shifters is the way they are and background on mating practices amongst the 'highborn'.  For .99 price right now, Chasing Sam is a bargain.For those that readChasing Sam (Vegas Mates Series, Novella) (#1), the author doesn't shy away from removing secondary characters. Not just removing them by death but the way they're killed. That continues into Saving Margaret and I have to say, wolves are blood thirsty, but this series takes it to a different level.  What's implied gives more weight because we imagine more when the words aren't there.  That an unconscious wolf is going to get his throat torn out by a psycho wolf.I'm still wondering how Renata was able to take out so many of Margaret's pack.  When they approached the house, couldn't they smell blood?  Couldn't they sense something was wrong?  How were they caught unprepared, especially the Alpha and Beta?  If Renata  used a long distance dart gun, the others had to see their companions fall.  I got the impression by how the story was written that the guys were all arriving in a group.  They had to stumble across bodies at some point or tried to communicate with the guards for Renata.  That whole mass killing of the pack's adult males just didn't work for me.I distinctly remember Chasing Sam because it was so thought provoking. As I was reading I wondered why the second story went into Margaret. WHO is Margaret? I couldn't remember her from the first book. She was a shadowy third or fourth character. But she's the daughter of an alpha, the oldest daughter and Saving Margaret is her story. While this installment was longer than the first, it didn't flow for me.  So much was packed into 130 pages.  Not just an expanded list of characters, there was so much going on.  Multiple plots and counter plots as well as a budding romance between Margaret and Scott.  We have Council problems, pack trouble, and all that is going on around Margaret and Scott.  The story should have expanded into at least 250 pages for full coverage!Her characters are top notch, I really enjoyed them, the background is there, but the story just explodes into so much going on.  I understood that the kodiac bears were guards to a common visitor to Vegas - Stayed at the hotel Margaret managed.  But I couldn't grasp why they were suddenly out for Margaret when everything else was going on.  Were they part of the Council?  I'm left guessing.  They were the bears that left a bad impression on Margaret, and she had plenty of reasons to be scared of them.  I'm a little foggy on how long Margaret was held captive by one of these bears and what was done to her was the high end of torture.  The image where she's cut down and the blood flowing. . . And the difficulty, that the bonds around her wrists were so tight and embedded into her flesh.  Oh yes, the images are stark and hard to forget.Yet she's a shifter and she recovers.  Not much about her head and coping mentally, just a brief mention as more is piled on Margaret.  She's under a tremendous load.  New mate, new location, no pack, threats abound, no family to rely on and recovering from a savage kidnapping.  There was just so much to this book, so many threads that are barely touched on.  Fortunately there aren't any 'cliff hangers', just a few unsolved situations that can wait for the next book.While Saving Margaret was read in one sitting and was engrossing, I couldn't give it more than 3.5 stars based on my reasons above.  I loved Chasing Sam and wrote a review on it ages ago - Loved that short story, so thought provoking.  Chasing Sam is worth reading but I'm still thinking on this book and just what I got out of it. -- Dan's Wife