love of the wildRating: 3 stars
Buy Links: 
 Amazon | All Romance
Length: Novel


I must admit that I have enjoyed much of Susan Laine’s writing over this past year or so and her Lifting the Veil series has produced some really fine stories with interesting characters and plot lines.  The premise is that the veil between the paranormal world and the regular one has been lifted, allowing for those supernatural beings to live, work, and play among humans.  The world has progressed to the point where there is a council to help paranormals transition into society.  As with any new thing, the veil and its rendering have caused much fear as well as curiosity.  So in this installment, Love of the Wild, we find Jim Faulkner, a travel writer, hunting down werewolves in order to do a story about them.  Unfortunately while skydiving into the area, his chute lands him up a tree and it is there that he is rescued by a less than civil werewolf named Dakotah.

Dakotah is not just any normal wolf however; he is, in fact one of a handful of progenitor wolves, those long living weres that have made all other alpha wolves.  Unaware that he is a “key” that draws progenitors to him with a fierce desire to mate him, Jim only has his sights set on Dakotah.  But Dak is not taking the bait—he has lived too long by himself and he will not take a human mate again and so he tosses Jim aside, leaving him open and vulnerable for another progenitor to claim.

This particular story introduced and unpacked a great deal of information about nearly all of the progenitor wolves into the existing series.  While I never felt that the story was slowed down or derailed by all these characters and their back-story, it also made the novel feel as though it jumped way too rapidly from plot point to plot point.  I felt as though we barely got to know many of these men, including Dakotah himself. He remained shadowy and underdeveloped.  Therefore, it was hard to believe that even after he actually physically tossed Jim away, Jim would still feel himself in love with Dak and secure in becoming not only his mate, but also a full-fledged werewolf himself.

Not only that, Jim’s own reasoning for parachuting into the rather barren area that he did, without any back up support, seemed rather far fetched.  I understood that given his older age (mid-forties) Jim was living life to its fullest, but being dropped from a plane and no one checking to see if he landed safely seemed to be a tad unbelievable.  I liked these men, and the other side characters as well, but there seemed to be more time spent setting up the premise for future novels than fully developing this installment.

Love of the Wild by Susan Laine had a really strong premise but failed to develop both characters and storyline fully enough to hook me into this new novel.  Perhaps the next book will right these flaws and shore up the overall story.  I hope so because this author certainly has the talent to make that happen!

A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.

 

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