Review: Unremarkable read - NOT A SHAPESHIFTER STORY
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 9, 2011
First off, this is not a shape-shifter story, which I expected from the cheesy cover and the title.  It's a surprisingly uninspiring short story about an apparently very conflicted woman being forced into the company of the man she had walked out on the day before their wedding, many years earlier.This book was a freebie, but even at that price I'm ambivalent as to whether or not it was worth it.  The female lead character, Kasie, was unremarkable, and seemed to obsess on imaginary conflict where none existed.  The male lead, Chayton, was not much stronger.  I found it annoying that he demanded that Kasie cook and work around the cabin when he had kidnapped her and held her at his snowed-in cabin against her will. He seemed to think that her initial refusal to "pull  her weight" made her a brat, but it was actually her repeated complaints about her parents' trying to "control her life" that made her a whiny brat.Kasie's weak character was more and more annoying as the book went on, but when she finally meets up with her father after many years of estrangement, she acts almost as though her total lack of contact never happened.  If she was that annoyed over all those years about her father "controlling her," she would not have been able to warm up to him or his new wife that quickly.  Basically, the author manufactured Kasie's feeling she was "controlled" by her parents to create some sort of tension in the story, a conflict to be overcome, but it's just too contrived to be believable.The ending was awkward, with Chayton suddenly acting entirely out of character compared to how he behaved in the prior 95% of the book, with no explanation for why he changed so dramatically from one scene to the next.  And what 26 year old woman is still a virgin, especially when she is supposedly about to marry a famous, handsome rock star, and who thinks she would prefer to just live with him instead?  The author seemed to require that Kasie remain chaste all those years away after she left Chayton and her father, however it was fine that Chayton had had "his share of flings!"  The old double standard - reinforced by a modern day female author.  Wow.