Komal's Reviews > Bitten

I knew it even before beginning this book that either I would completely loathe it, or I would not finish.
Bitten was forced upon me by a colleague who's a paranormal romance fanatic. The book was also mentioned several times to me by other goodreads members, so I decided to give one more chance to paranormal. I always end up giving too many chances to things I know I would never find a likeness for. Perhaps I'm biased. In fact, I think I am; starting any book with "I'm going to hate this" doesn't really help push away the negative thought from your mind even when you're half-way into it and it actually is not that bad.

Perhaps Bitten was subjected to one of my several severely lethal prejudices, for example the fact that it was written by a woman. I'm not a sexist and nor am I against feminism (as long as it focuses on strengthening women and not degrading men). But I am a complete misogynist when it comes to skill-lacking female authors penning down their silly fantasies in the shapes of contemporary Paranormal and/or Young Adult romances. To all these ladies: stop. Please. You're making me hate the fact that I'm a woman. The worst part is that these 'books' are gaining more popularity than a would-be-secret-child of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Another reason I've stopped sifting through the Goodreads Most Popular and Highly Anticipated Books of whatever-year lists.

I went a bit overboard with my contempt up there, and Bitten, while not completely off the contemporary romance Venn Diagram, wasn't as bad as some of the others, with the paranormal mixed in it. Bitten wasn't as poorly written as most Paranormal romances that I've tripped across (Hush, Hush--I shiver). It actually had quite a nice bit of tone to it, to be honest. The writing wasn't mediocre, but the story it portrayed was horrible.

I don't think Bitten had a story, and if it did, that story did not surface even after 160 pages of the novel--the point where I put the book down calmly and decided to kick it out of my life and memory permanently (I bet something drastic would've turned up right on the 161st page, eh?) The major setback was how the events were unfolded: we have a thirty something real shallow, like real shallow, female protagonist thrown into a bizarre and highly unrealistic set of events. She was thrust into a house of men (of course, she was the only woman there, so, sex vibes radiating off everywhere) who she had a past connection with of more than a decade, and that connection was never explained. It felt like Elena Michaels was getting abnormally comfortable in a house full of complete strangers and this was downright weird.

Clayton, the supposedly alpha male douche bag of this book and the undeniable love interest of Elena Michaels, was a mess. Apparently, Elena hates him, but he still has full liberty to use her whenever and wherever he desires, and then both pretend nothing happened and Elena goes back to hating him. It's such a bullshit chemistry, that I don't even get it. Who the hell behaves like that? Oh and it's completely not cheating on her boyfriend, Philip, when she sleeps with this asshole because, hey, he's different. He's a werewolf. Werewolf genitals don't count.

The action played like a movie where you accidentally hit the [slow motion] button. There was literally no description, instead we get some pretty useless and unnecessary musings from Elena's head, with no concern for logic during humane interactions. The whole progression of the book was choppy and static. Like someone broke up one story into parts and pasted them haphazardly, with some paragraphs and histories missing. No other character stood out, except, perhaps Jeremy. But even he wasn't saved from being stereotyped.

Conclusion
I still think I can give paranormal another chance. I'm of the belief that it's my misfortune to trump across the most blatantly ridiculous representatives of the genre and that there are some gems out there, away from the clutching hands of the mainstream fan-base and devoid of preposterous romance, which are still waiting to be found and help redeem Paranormal books in my eyes. The Dresden Files looks like a good place to start. I'm also open to other Paranormal recommendations, preferably not linked to women, romance and alpha male douche bags.