Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

 

Synopsis:

Calla 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?

Source for picture and synopsis: www.goodreads.com

Overall Review:

    I love werewolf books. I don’t know if it’s the concept of ordinary people being able to turn into my very favorite animal, but I love reading about werewolves. Shapeshifters in general are really appealing to me, but werewolves? Awesome. And Nightshade is one of my favorite werewolf books of all time. I loved the characters, and, yes, as I’ve mentioned before, I do hate love triangles, but honestly? I didn’t mind the love triangle in this one.

    On one hand, I really liked Ren and Calla together. Ren, I thought, brings necessary risk and excitement to Calla’s ordered, structured life. Plus, I could tell that he really cares about Calla, despite some of his actions suggesting otherwise.

    On the other hand, Shay is so sweet! He’s brave, too, which sometimes can be a hard quality to portray when writing about a boy who is physically weaker than the girl that he falls in love with. He seems like such a great guy, and he clearly cares about Calla and wants to protect her, even though Calla’s physical strength is superior to Shay’s. So I understood why Calla cared so much about them both, though I didn’t enjoy too much reading about the position that this love triangle put the characters in.

    Another thing I really liked about this book is that Calla is such a strong character. She can clearly take care of herself and hates it when anyone tries to take care of her. I loved the writing because although it brought necessary tension to the story, the author was able to add some comic relief to the novel.

    Basically, I loved pretty much every aspect of the story, and there wasn’t much that I disliked. Jeez, I’m feeling so mushy right now--I’ve been gushing and gushing about how in love I am with this book. So . . . onward!

This next part is for people who enjoyed the review and want to learn more about the book. However, beware: *MINOR SPOILERS!*

The Plot

    I thought that the plot was great. The story was clearly building toward some huge blowup in the end, and when that blowup came, the author definitely managed to keep the excitement going, when so many other authors have failed to do so. The story did lack some originality, but there were aspects--like the Keepers--that made the story different from a lot of other werewolf books. Though I do think that the whole love triangle thing is a little cliche. But maybe that’s just me, since I really don’t like love triangles. Overall, I’d give the plot about a 9 out of 10.

The Characters

    Man, did I love these characters. I really like reading about strong girl characters, and Calla is definitely a strong person. Her packmates have a lot of respect for her--even her best friend, Bryn, knows when to be Calla’s best friend and when to be her submissive packmate. I also loved how protective Calla was of her brother, Ansel.

    As I’ve said before, even Calla’s two love interests, Shay and Ren, were impressive. They were both amazing people in their own way--both brave and kind (though Ren sometimes has a strange way of showing it). They even managed to make the love triangle a little easier to read about.

    I would have liked to see more character development in some of the characters, like Bryn and maybe even Logan. However, I thought that the characters were really easy to like and that they made the story more interesting. I would give the characters about a 9.5 out of 10.

The Conclusion

    The conclusion was pretty good. It was exciting, and I didn’t really think it was too anticlimactic, though there was a definite cliffhanger. It made me want to get straight into the next book, though of course I couldn’t just jump immediately into the second book because . . . well, I didn't have it yet. The conclusion definitely made me aware that things are bound to get worse for Calla and her friends before they get better. Then I was kind of caught between a “Oh, man, more bad stuff” feel and a “NEXT BOOK! GIMME GIMME GIMME” feel. However, some parts of it were slightly confusing for me. There were some moments where I had to stop and figure out what in the world was going on. Still, the conclusion was not disappointing at all, and I would give this conclusion maybe a 9 out of 10.

Overall Rating: 9.17 out of 10

Thanks for reading,

JC <3