Jane Stewart's Reviews > Cry Wolf

2.5 stars. Ok, but not a hit. The last half was too drawn out. The beginning was missing.

STORY BRIEF:
Anna was turned into a werewolf three years earlier by a member of Leo’s pack. Leo was the alpha leader of the Chicago area pack. He ordered his pack members to rape and beat Anna for three years until his death. Bran was the leader of all werewolves in the US. When he learned about Leo, Bran sent Charles to kill Leo. Charles meets Anna and knows she is his mate. Anna and Charles leave Chicago and go to his home in Montana. Something evil is happening in the wilderness nearby. Bran sends Charles and Anna to investigate and stop or kill it. Charles is an alpha werewolf and Bran’s son. Anna is an Omega werewolf which means she is not affected by orders from alphas, she doesn’t have to follow them. She also has a calming effect on other werewolves.

REVIEWER’S OPINION:
I normally do not read urban fantasy. I prefer romance genres over straight fantasy genres. Therefore, my reviews may not be appropriate for die-hard urban fantasy fans. I’ve loved some stories which are not romance, for example: Harry Potter, but Cry Wolf didn’t rate as high for me. It had some interesting parts. It was an ok story.

The first half was good, but the last half was too drawn out. The last half was about Anna and Charles searching for the evil in the wilderness. I was impatient for things to happen during the last half.

I wish the author had written more about the three years Anna spent with Leo’s pack. The book starts with Leo’s death and only has a few flashbacks about what Anna went through. I wanted to know more about why Leo turned her, and why he had his pack brutalize her. What did they do to her and how did she respond? Apparently the pack couldn’t disobey Leo, but someone disobeyed enough to tell her she could call Bran. When did this happen and why didn’t it happen sooner? What did she say to Bran when she called for help? I was curious about many things from that time and wish the author would have shown it.

Guess what? I just learned that the story about these previous three years was told in the anthology “On The Prowl.” I kept my previous paragraph as is, because it shows how I reacted without knowing there was a prequel. I definitely think readers should read the prequel first. The prequel was not listed anywhere in my paperback book. I thought “Cry Wolf” was the first in the series. It is not.

DATA:
Story length: 294 pages. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: one scene, 2 pages long. Setting: current day Chicago, Illinois, and Montana. Copyright: 2008. Genre: urban fantasy.