He's in a cage, I reminded myself, but the words meant nothing to me, because I just couldn't stop staring into his wild eyes and playing the last words he'd said before he Shifted, over and over again.
I got bit.
I got bit.
I got bit.
At the age of four, Bryn watched a rabid werewolf brutally murder her parents. She was rescued and taken in by the mysterious Callum, the alpha of his pack. Now fifteen, Bryn's been a human among werewolves, adhering to pack rule.
But the pack's been keeping a secret, and when Bryn goes exploring against Callum's orders, she finds Chase, a newly turned teen Were locked in a cage. Bryn needs answers, and she needs Chase to get them. Suddenly, it's Bryn and Chase against the werewolf world, whatever the consequences.
Raised by Wolves will leave you howling for more.
Review (Spoilery!):
I was really excited to read Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes because I had read so many great reviews for it. I am on a hunt for an excellent werewolf story (no pun intended) and I thought this one would be it. Unfortunately, that was not the case. While Raised by Wolves had a lot of potential at the start, it lost favour with me as it continued.
The first point at which I was significantly disappointed was when Bryn made numerous excuses to see Chase, the boy whom she believes can answer all her questions about what had happened to her when she was four. At this point, I was thoroughly confused by Bryn's actions and wondered why she didn't just ask Callum (her guardian) for the answers to her questions, rather going through the gruelling tasks that Callum put her through just to see Chase again.
At the beginning of the book Bryn knows that everyone is hiding something from her and so she defies Callum's orders and sneaks into his house- where the newly turned Were Chase is conveniently caged. Upon setting eyes on each other, Bryn feels a connection to him. I was annoyed by how quickly they formed a 'connection' because at this point Chase was a stranger to Bryn and he was already saying 'I miss you' to Bryn. How on earth could he have missed her if he never knew her before? This wasn't explained.
After her brief chat with him in which she learns that Chase 'got bit', she believes that Chase is the same as her and has all the answers. This did not make any sense because Bryn and Chase's encounters with rabid wolves were very different and I wondered two things. What were Bryn's questions anyway? She doesn't inform the reader. Also, how could Chase possibly have the answers to her questions?
I disliked the constant repitition of sentences such as 'I got bit' and the continous utilisation of one word sentences which added nothing to the story and became irritating. I expected to read about how Bryn's parents were killed early on in the story, however, it was a long and drawn out process which wasn't effective. Most of the time, Bryn came up with 'solutions' to her problems in roundabout ways which lacked logic and left me confused.
For a story that was told in first person and present tense, I couldn't follow Bryn's logic sometimes because it was so jumpy. More often however, Bryn would repeat something she'd said before again and again which frustrated me. Furthermore, there was a lot of repitition which slowed down the pace of the story, with a favourite being 'I got bit. I got bit. I got bit.'
There were quite a lot of characters and rightly so, as this was a story featuring werewolf packs, however, many of the characters were flat. At the beginning I was hoping that the characters would develop throughout the story, however, I soon realised that I didn't care about what happened to Sora, Lance, Casey, Lake, Devon, Chase and even Bryn. Sora and Lance (Devon's parents) only had a few lines, Lake was an okay character. Devon was an okay character. Chase was boring. I didn't understand why he and Bryn were connected anyway. Their relationship developed mostly through their mind conversations, rather than physically being next to each other and holding a conversation.
There were quite a few conversations about Ali's (Bryn's adopted mum) and Casey's marriage and the breakdown of it but once again, I didn't care because first of all, Casey had perhaps two lines in the entirety of the book and second of all, Ali's arguments, much like Bryn's, were illogical.
Bryn apparently has a 'Resiliency'; an instinct to survive. That's how she always gets out of bad situations. She's scrappy. Chase has it too. This explanation came out of nowhere and left me shaking my head in disappointment due to the sorry explanation.
The most interesting thing would have to be how Bryn can re-do other werewolves' 'pack-bonds'. This means that she can change their connection to their pack. Bryn moves Devon's and Lake's pack-bond connection away from Callum's pack and onto herself so that they only have a pack-bond with her and Chase.
For something that is almost impossible to do, this was just too, too easy for her to do and had me scoffing. Furthermore, Devon and Lake accepted the fact that Bryn re-did their pack-bonds without one word of complaint, even though she hadn't gotten their permission in the first place. Realistically, they would have been somewhat angry at the very least. They had been connected to Callum's pack for all their lives and now she just changed it. They should have gone through some kind of trauma. But they didn't.
At one point, Bryn says that she had siblings, however, they are never mentioned again. Another time, she says that she closed off her mind from Callum's pack when she was four, but in another section, she says it was when she was six. While she states that she's closed her mind from Callum's pack, Callum was able to read her mind like a book. Furthermore, 'Callum' is a very modern name for someone who's supposedly lived for a thousand years. I was expecting something a bit more archaic.
The plot of Raised by Wolves was simply comprised of two things: Find Rabid. Kill Rabid. The 'Big, Bad Wolf' just wasn't that big and he wasn't as bad as he could have been. This is due to the fact that we didn't get to see the attacks on the children firsthand. I won't say what exactly happened at the end, but the plot was just too simplistic and there weren't any surprises.
I guessed a lot of what happened before it did, largely because Bryn took ages to explain anything and she was slow on the uptake. The ending was undramatic and anti-climactic. It was slightly rushed and everything was wrapped up very nicely and unrealistically at the end.
Overall, while I expected great things from Raised by Wolves, I was left disappointed. It didn't leave me 'howling for more' as the back cover promised. I wouldn't recommend this book but perhaps if you liked Shiver, you'll like this. I won't be reading the next book in the series, Trial by Fire.
Book Rating: 2/5
Concept: 4/5
Cover: 3/5
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
