Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Maddy Barone - Sleeping With the Wolf

Rising country music star Carla boards a plane in the year 2014. But it crashes in the future, fifty years after Armageddon has destroyed technology and plagues have reduced the female population to a precious few. She finds herself offered as prize in a Bride Fight, where only the strongest and fiercest men are allowed to compete to win a wife. Alpha werewolf Taye knows Carla is his mate. He wins the Bride Fight and takes her to his den, ready to give her everything, even his heart. Will Carla ever be ready to give him anything?

Comment: I like shifter stories, especially if they are about wolves. So, I added this book to my list in hopes of it being the next best series featuring wolf shifters and their community but it certainly wasn't as pleasant as I imagined...

This books presents us Carla, the heroine and main focus of this novel, after the plane crash that sent her 50 years into the future. Carla is a young woman, she was about to become a country singer star and now she is facing men fighting to be the winner of her person in marriage. How this can be possible she has no idea but it seems the future is now a place where there aren't many women and all men want the chance to have a partner/mate.
One of the men, also a wolf, wins the Bride Fight that will "give" Carla to him and they set off to his house. Can Carla find happiness?

Yes, I'm very aware the premise of this book is a little bit weird and far fetched but there are many series/books out there in several genres that can be quite great in presenting something like this as a start and the development is well done. It wasn't the case here and in order not to turn this into a post about only bad issues (I found very little to appreciate), I'll simply enumerate my issues in topics.
But I'll start by saying that the good things were the concept, I was actually interested in reading about wolves, a pack and a world where women are seen as sort of treasures and how their presence could change a family or a pack.
I was also very interested in having a good world building and interesting scenarios to see developing in further books.

Apparently, I was too expectant because this felt like a story the author thought of, focused on the details necessary and the rest was just put there with no real complexity nor credible development (even considering the sci fi scenario).

Ok, some issues:
1) I didn't like the story simply because there is no solid explanation about anything. Why has the world suffered an apocalypse? Why did it affect mostly women and not men? Why, inf so, are some women spared and others not?
2) Why are there Wolves? Did they exist before or after the apocalipse?
3) Some cities seem to work out well enough, despite the erasing of most commodities and energy and stuff we would consider vital to a contemporary world. Why didn't people simply organize themselves again?
4) Everything changed in 50 years. Is this really time enough for things to change so radically in terms of world's population and technology and social situations but not in people's ages? Can wolves really just show up because of whatever happened and act and live as they've been there for longer?
5) In terms of people and pack structure, where does so many wolves come from?? Weren't women just a few? And if not much time went by to renovate a generation....

I also thought the romance wasn't good. It was not romantic and the couple never seemed to be as in syn as we are told. The constant "no, I don't know you" to "you're so hot and I want to have sex with you" from the heroine were very annoying.

This story has many ideas, yes. But the way this is written seems very superficial and I think it didn't pinpoint the important/necessary situations to turn the story - and eventually the series - into something complex and well structured in general.
Because I didn't like the story much nor the writing style, I think I won't read any more books by this author.
Grade: 3/10

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