Bitten - Kelley Armstrong

[goodreads]

Title: Bitten
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 448
Date read: September 2008, April 2020

Elena Michaels is your regular twenty-first-century girl: self-assured, smart and fighting fit. She also just happens to be the only female werewolf in the world...

It has some good points. When she walks down a dark alleyway, she's the scary one. But now her Pack - the one she abandoned so that she could live a normal life - are in trouble, and they need her help. Is she willing to risk her life to help the ex-lover who betrayed her by turning her into a werewolf in the first place? And, more to the point, does she have a choice?


I've had to downgrade the rating here quite a bit. When I first read it, it was a clear 5-star read, but this time around I found I had serious issues with it, so have downgraded the rating to 3.5 - - rounded up to 4 on goodreads to give it the benefit of doubt, as I read it during quarantine where I wasn't at my best.

My main problem with it, is Clay's treatment of Elena. It does get explained along the way, but it's a case of "too little, too late" at a time when I've already become inclined to hate him. The relationship just doesn't work. Also, there are several deaths that are... unnecessary for want of better word. The characters are never fleshed out for the readers to care about them, so the deaths only serve as shock value and annoyed me more than anything else.

That said, I'm still glad I've finally reread it - it was VERY difficult to put down.