Review: Sara the Brat
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2014
I'd give this book four stars for creativity and world-building. I appreciate the way Barone executes her vision of a post-apocalyptic world.  It's unique, interesting, and never heavy-handed.  I've read all the books in this series, and the setting never disappoints.  I wasn't as big a fan of Snake and Mel's story. The plot echoed events in Ellie's Wolf (book 5)--climactic kidnapping by women-stealers, abuse and attempted rape, wolves save the day. And the big reveal about the missing mother, I saw that "twist" coming a mile away. Still, I love the way these wolves love.So why three stars?  Blame it on Sara the teenage brat. Can a teenage girl act this way? Yes. Do I enjoy reading about that kind of behavior?  NO.  Absolutely not. Sara is a spoiled b!tch who complains all the time--first in book 5 and now in Wolf's Vengeance, book 6. I know her father indulged her, but any idiot would see how good she's got it with the Wolf Clan. But you rarely see an iota of compassion, gratitude, or happiness from Sara.  And she's consistently obnoxious and mean to Jelly/Stone, and even endangers other people with her brat-fulness.  And everyone is way too easy on her. I kept waiting for Mel to shake some sense into Sara, but she never did. Even at the end.  Sara says ugly, unkind, bigoted things, and Mel just ignored them.  Unfortunately, Sara's presence made the book unpleasant for me.And in the conflicted Sara/Stone relationship, I see an almost exact repeat of the Rose/Sky relationship. The girl is too young/unwilling/unnerved by wolves, so the two must be separated.  Only in this case, Stone stays home and Sara goes to Omaha, which we learned in book 5 is a bad place for women, but no one has communicated this to the others. Is the author running out of fresh conflict for the wolf clan?  I hope not, because until now, I've loved all of these characters and enjoyed their paths to HEA.