Review: The Better to Bite
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2013
Anna Lambert has been different her whole life.  She's incapable of losing things and can magically find them.  Bar that one gift, she's lived a normal life in Chicago with her mother and father, who works as a cop specializing on murder cases.  That all changes when her mother is involved in an accident and her father takes a job at a new town, Haven.Woodsy and small, to Anna it seems like exactly what the name would suggest, a Haven.  With a high school filled with beautiful boys and surrounded by lush woods, she feels she has little to worry about there.  She realizes how wrong she could be when strange wolf attacks continuously occur under strange conditions and an old witch's warnings get not only increasingly ominous, but accurate.  As she tries to uncover the past of the town, a strange past of her own arises.Over all I thought the book was wonderful.  Anna Lambert was a well-developed character that I had no trouble connecting with.  I went through every twist and turn with her, and it was hard to forget she wasn't actually real.The plot was well-developed and it seemed like there was a new surprise in every chapter, whether it be a juicy secret from the past or another piece in the mystery of the attacks.  I especially liked the way Anna had trouble deciding between two local boys.  Both were caught up in something dangerous and potentially dark, but were very different.  One was quiet and broody, the other your typical all American boy type.  While some young adult books are notorious for whiny heroines that just can't make up their mind on a boy and spend the entire books going back and forth like a hormonal ping pong match, I thought the heroine handled it well.  She wasn't whiny or overly immature about it, nor did the book seem to revolve around it.  I thought it was balanced well with the other aspects of the books, such as mystery and discovery of the past.  The last action scene of the book was well-written, and the twist at the end was a fabulously concealed surprise.  I didn't see it coming, but it was a logical ending that didn't leave me confused.I appreciate the well tied up happily-for-now ending and can't wait for the next book to come out!