Nicole Reads A Lot

so many books, so little time

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

on January 25, 2012

Title:Nightshade
Author:Andrea Cremer
Publication Date:June 2011
Publisher's DescriptionCalla Tor has always known her destiny: After graduating from the Mountain School, she’ll be the mate of sexy alpha wolf Ren Laroche and fight with him, side by side, ruling their pack and guarding sacred sites for the Keepers. But when she violates her masters’ laws by saving a beautiful human boy out for a hike, Calla begins to question her fate, her existence, and the very essence of the world she has known. By following her heart, she might lose everything - including her own life. Is forbidden love worth the ultimate sacrifice?
My rating:****

Warning, this review is mildly spoileriffic.

This book was certainly an interesting take on werewolves and witches. I wasn’t too sure about this world when I first started reading, but it quickly grew on me. My hesitation was due to the fact that I may have werewolf fatigue (I just finished a review copy of Raven Calls, that review will come out closer to the book’s publication date), and also because the publisher’s description sounds far more insipid than I found this book to be.

There were things about this book that didn’t thrill me. I thought that the Keepers’ rules regarding the purity of female alphas was just to the left of the Taliban’s, and this more than anything helped me get on Team Anybody Else. I’m already against any culture that slut-shames a girl for a kiss but feels that it’s perfectly okay for a boy to sleep his way around the high school. Hey, Keepers, the 50s called, and they want their gender roles back. I also didn’t get why the kids at the school were so afraid of the Guardians. I believe that the explanation provided about how this world works is that the humans did not know what was different about the Guardian kids. Why, then, were they afraid of them? Why were the teachers? What did everybody else think it was that set these people apart? I may reread the early pages of this book and see if I overlooked something.

On a more positive note, I felt that some of the choices the characters in this book made washed away some of the Twilight sludge that has stubbornly stuck to my brain jelly for the last several years. Things that in that series would have necessitated 1) an interspecies altercation or 2) a marriage licence happened here in a nicely understated way. I appreciated how Ms. Cremer gave her characters layers, and even the personalities of the less prominent pack members shone through. My only regret is that my public library’s ebook site is down right now, because I really need to check out the second book in this series!


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