Review: Better than the first with more likeable characters, but struggles to bring something new to the table
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2013
I was given this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.Circle of Lies by Sara Dailey and Staci Weber takes place right after Pack of Lies. The difference is we focus on different characters-- now we are in the heads of Aiden, Alli's brother, and Teagan, Alli's friend and likely Aiden's love interest. Teagan struggles with an alcoholic father and her burgeoning feelings for Aiden, who is part of the Beautiful, Untouchable crowd. Aiden, on the other hand, is struggling to even become a wolf for the first time and with the new politics that have erupted from the explosive secret that was revealed at the end of book one. At the same time, a werewolf hunter is determined to eliminate the entire pack. Can Aiden and Teagan work through their differences to ultimately be together?Here's my difficulty. If this book were stand alone, I would have seriously considered a 3.5 star, rounding up to four stars. The book is much more polished than the first one in editing and prose flow. The authors and their editors have definitely improved. In addition, Aiden and Teagan are much more interesting and likeable protagonists. That said, I'm not sure that this book brings that much more to the table because the similarities between the plots of the two books are pretty striking. We still have an alcoholic parent. We still have a love story that dominates the pages. We still have a True Mate twist. We still have the Alpha of the pack being a complete douchebag that wants his son to bow to his will and become the next Alpha-- makes me wonder, 1) why his awesome wife sticks with him 2) why anyone would be okay with him being Alpha in the first place. There is NOTHING nice about him. I would have liked him to be a much more three dimensional character.Overall, a much improved effort from these two authors, but they need to dig in deep to come up with something unique in the plot that will grab readers to stick around.