Review: A "C" Story at Best
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 4, 2011
This was a "C" story at best and I am probably being too generous.First of all, I will say that I absolutely hate when authors leave cliffhangers to their stories. This was a novella so I should have guessed that it was a prelude for a full-length novel, Hungry Like the Wolf. So we are left to wonder what becomes of Olivia and Garrick. The problem for me when authors do the novella way in advance of the novel is that I forget about or lose interest in wanting to read the novel by the time it comes out. My suggestion to authors is to space it so that the novella comes out no more than a month in advance of the novel.SPOILERSNow...with that said, on to Olivia and Garrick. Olivia is a tough EMT who arrives on the scene of incident where she is needed to assist a thrice shot female victim. She is amazed that the woman is still alive and coherent. During her transport to the hospital, the woman starts uttering strange things, to Olivia's ears. Enroute, the ambulance suffers a blow out of some kind that causes it to summersault over an embankment. Note: Ms. Anna never explains what caused the blow out. Was it Garrick, was it a cut in the tire, an run in with another car...what? After the ambulance lands at the bottom of the embankment, the victim -- Sonja, who is on the verge of death says, "the keeper comes." Olivia looks up and sees shaggy hair, sharp fangs, and a clawed hand reaching into the ambulance to grab her and she faints. She wakes up later chained hand and foot to a wall in a non-descript basement. I'll fast forward details but to make a short story even shorter, not much time passes before Olivia is hot for her captor, Garrick. Seriously?!?! You are kidnapped and chained and your panties are getting damp. She had been there less than 24 hours to suffering with Stockholm syndrome.I guess I wasn't impressed by the pace of the story. Everything seemed to happen way too quickly for my licking. I understand that it was a novella but I would have liked a bit more character development and background. She was kidnapped...she got aroused...he got aroused...they had sex...she was attacked by another wolf...and he sent her away. Literally, it was just that quick.It seems as if Ms. Anna was in a rush to get to the end of the story to leave the reader at the cliffhanger. A few more words at the beginning and the middle and a bit more story development would have made the book a decent read. For me, reading this novella has had an effect adverse to what the author intended...I'm not at all eager to read Hungry Like the Wolf if this hurried writing style is indicative of what I could expect in the full novel.For me the best two things about the book were the cover (on Amazon) and the end.