Bride of the Wolf by Susan Krinard
March 1, 2010 (Available now)
Paranormal Romance
Paperback, 384 pages
HQN Books; Original edition
Reviewed by Karra

Wanting to escape a past she believes to have ruined her life, Rachel Lyndon places an ad to be a mail-order bride and prays that a kind man fulfills her wish. When that man turns out to be an older rancher, she thinks she is saved, and through the correspondence of letters, she and her husband-to-be plan for her arrival on the dusty Texas plains.

There’s only one problem when she arrives: her future husband has died and no one bothers to tell her, keeping her in the dark with lies and excuses.

Heath Renier, or Holden Renshaw as he’s now known, stumbles upon the remains of his rancher boss left to rot on the dry, dusty dessert. Holden’s a shapeshifter and uses his wolf nose to try to scent out the truth. He thinks that the rancher’s death may have been an accident—thrown off his horse, perhaps—until he discovers old Jed’s saddlebags, hidden amongst the dessert brush. Inside, he finds enough money to give him a comfortable life, several voided or uncompleted wills, and a bundle of letters to and from Jed’s bride-to-be.

The shock that Jed was to be married and hadn’t spoken much of it didn’t compare to the bigger shock that Jed’s own money-grubbing nephew had been written out of the will, replaced with the name of Rachel Lyndon. Heath realizes that with the proof of the voided wills and the placement of the hidden saddlebags, maybe Jed’s death was the result of foul play after all.

Upon Rachel’s arrival on the ranch, neither Holden nor Jed’s money-grubbing nephew Sean, tell her about Jed’s death. In fact, both men remain tight lipped about the old man’s demise, and though Holden knows about Jed’s death, he becomes curious as to why Sean has a knowing, mischievous look in his eyes when Rachel claims she is already the bride of Jed.

From then on, it’s a story spun with mystery, lies, false accusations and a few surprises, and when the rug is finally pulled out from underneath Holden and Rachel’s feet, it’s the truth that will either bind the shapeshifter to his mate, or forever drive them apart.

I’ll state right off the bat that I’m not a big fan of historicals and westerns simply because I can’t get past the fact that the characters hardly ever bathe and then do dirty deeds between the sheets (or on tables, in the garden, etc…), but when I saw that this western had a paranormal aspect to it, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I had a really hard time getting through Bride of the Wolf, and at first, I thought it was because of my dislike for the skewed genre, but after finishing it, I realize that it was the story in general that didn’t appeal to me.

First off, the book blurb above isn’t exactly accurate. It states, “Rachel Lyndon yearns to escape her scandalous past, but her dreams for a better life seem ruined after she buries her fiancé on the Texas plains.” When I read this, I thought that the character of Rachel would be walking into a life where she’s mourning her dead fiancé. There are a few other little slip-ups in the blurb that are misleading as well, but my question is, how did Rachel bury her fiancé on the Texas plains if she didn’t know he was dead until close to the end of the book? The story’s title does nothing to accurately portray what the book is about, either. It’s more like a precursor to the ending.

I don’t know about you, but when I read a blurb, I read it to gain a sense of the storyline and the world that the author has created, not to get an entire recap of a book (complete with misguided information) that attempts to rope me into a story that’s much different than what’s portrayed in the synopsis.

The actual storyline just seemed like a runaround and a giant mess of finger pointing and kept secrets. One character knows about the lies of another character, while this other character over there is plotting and scheming the demise of the first character, and so on. As a reader, all of the mysteries are revealed through the points of view from the various characters, all of whom reveal their secrets via third person point of view. So since the reader already knows everyone’s secrets, the rest of the story becomes a cluster of roundabout plotlines until the reader simply wonders when the sh*t will hit the fan and end the confusion and accusations among the characters.

Now maybe the story could have been saved if the truth about the “villain” had come to a head in the middle of the book, leaving the characters to deal with the fallout and their off-kilter romance, instead of quickly wrapping most of the action into the last ten pages and then ending the book.

The paranormal aspect didn’t help the story at all as it was almost a nonchalant characteristic of Holden. Yes, he had a twisted childhood because of his double nature, but that aspect could have been substituted with just about anything to make him the angry, gruff man he turned out to be. He turns into a wolf and runs to relieve stress, rescues a cowhand from the Sean-the-villain while in wolf form, and startles the heroine when she sees him transform for the first time, but the plot plays up the western aspect more so than anything else. To me, he was just a rough guy who just happened to change into a wolf when the mood suited him.

The character of Rachel seemed like a typical woman from the era of the late 1800s, as she was scorned by a lover and shunned by her family for deeds an unmarried woman was thought to not partake in. She was probably the strongest character who showed the most growth throughout the book, whereas Holden’s “growth” just kind of plopped into the story at the end.

Maybe that’s how all historical-westerns are in terms of plots and characters, but I found out the hard way that this one just wasn’t for me. I literally sat there after I read the last page and said, “That’s it? All of that, and that’s it?” I think that’s about the gist of my thoughts on this book.

This time was a bust, Susan Krinard, but maybe next time.

Rating: 2/5

~*Karra*~

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