A
Title: Bitten
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publication Info: Plume 2002
ISBN: 9780452283480
Genre: Paranormal
This isn’t so much a review as a re-read and reflection as to why I love this book so much.
I reread this book because it’s one of my favorites, but I didn’t question whether or not I’d enjoy it. I knew I would, and I did, and I’ll probably reread it again soon, even though I’ll remember what happens.
This was the book that hooked me on the paranormal romance, and rocked my world when I read it. I had no idea romance could be like this, that heroines could be angry and violent, that exploring the rage-filled and violent side of humans could be so fascinating. I think it’s because of this book that I have such a love for werewolf romance fiction.
If you’re not familiar with this book, go read it now. I’ll give the briefest plot synopsis possible. Elena Michaels is living in Toronto, desperate to have a normal life. She can’t. She’s a werewolf.
The story opens with Elena trying to find a safe place to shift. Because she’s put it off for so long, she can’t stop herself. When she’s called back to her Pack in upstate New York, she tries to resist going, but she can’t avoid that, either. Irritated that she’s being commanded by so many forces in her life, she leaves her boyfriend and their apartment under some really flimsy excuses, and heads south.
When she returns to the Pack, there are major problems she has to face, not the least of which is Clay. It would be too mild to say he has it bad for her. It’s more like he has it worst for her, and Elena finds herself torn between the world she’s carefully built for herself, and the life she keeps trying to leave, but can’t.
I don’t know if it’s possible to describe how much I love this book. Even after multiple readings, the minute I pick it up, I’m done. Call in for takeout and ignore the woman drooling in the corner. That’s just Sarah, reading “Bitten.”
This last reread was brought about when I started wondering why it was that I was drawn to wolf shifter books but not much else in the shifty universe (except were-koalas. I’m telling you. Next big thing: sleepy and cute, with BIG ASS CLAWS OMG. Were-Phascolarctos. Trust me on this).
I hold this book entirely responsible for my love of shifter wolf romance, even bad shifter wolf romance. It’s hard for any book to measure up to this one. The story is told from Elena’s point of view, in first person, and even though the reader spends the entirety of the story in her head and viewing things from her perspective, it doesn’t get old. She’s the relative newcomer to the wolf world, and through her the reader gets a thorough education in their hierarchy.
The story has three main threads: Elena vs. Clay, Elena vs. her life in Toronto or with the Pack, and Elena vs. herself. That last one informs the other two and is the most powerful with each subsequent reread.
The focus on Jeremy made me want his story more, though I’m hesitant to pick up the sequels for fear I won’t enjoy them as much. I read the prequels to Bitten when they were available online, and having that additional backstory has made re-reads of the novel more powerful. Everything that happens in the book is more significant. As a result, I genuinely miss the characters and the world when I’m done.
My favorite part of this novel is the complexity of what is revealed as Elena learns to accept herself. The book’s exploration of a female werewolf – the only one of her kind – reframes and creates a new arena for fictional exploration of female violence. Elena herself is part horrified and part fascinated by her own capacity for killing, either as a human or as a wolf, and that struggle, which is both internal and external in the story, is the aspect that remains with me after I finish the book. Elena is both violent and vulnerable, fearless and yet afraid to love and accept anyone, even herself. The ways in which Armstrong peels away Elena’s defenses is chilling, and a lesson in the art of not revealing too much, but revealing plenty at the same time.
There are so many scenes that get me, like when Elena allows one of the wolves to lean on her while making it seem like she’s leaning on him, or when she finds a secret hidden in a closet that tell her something that should have been painfully obvious to her. The scene where Clay comes toward her in the lamplight. Or, when Elena has dinner with Phillip’s sisters and mother, and watches family interactions from a distance, even while she’s right there among them. Later, Elena finds herself with her Pack family – and is part of the group, though she struggles to hold herself apart as she did before. The power of this book is in the sneaky emotion and the pain of it, and in the depth of possibly limitless loyalty and violence Elena and the other characters possess.
Reading it makes me wonder about the role of violence in shaping the popularity of paranormals and urban fantasy in romance, and the ways in which violence and vulnerability coexist in romance heroines. Elena was one of the first characters I read in a paranormal setting who was both fragile and forged with otherworldly strength. She’s angry and full of latent rage – and has an outlet for it that human women do not have access to, one that romance readers read about repeatedly. She can and does become the violent, raging, instinctively vengeful animal that we are told is unacceptable behavior for women.
I never tire of revisiting with her, and learning something new from her story.
This book is available from Amazon, Indiebound, Book Depository, and Powell’s.
I’m kind of obsessed with female werewolf stories, and I really really really wanted to like this book, but it was a DNF for me.
There were a couple of things about the story that got an out-loud “oh PLEASE” (something about the pack’s book of secrets that was scientifically impossible? I’d have to go back and check). But the main issue for me was Elena.
She was too frustrating for me for me to like—yeah, she was angry, but she spent the first part of the book saying she wasn’t going to be pushed around by the male werewolves, that she wasn’t going to do what they wanted her to, and then doing it anyway. She seemed like an old-skool heroine to me—“rebellious” in name only. I’ve read books where a character’s loyalty to the pack v. his/her own wishes seems to be a part of the identity/dilemma of being a were or shifter, but I couldn’t see that here. She would say, “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on? Fine! I’m leaving!” And then NOT LEAVE. ARGH.
The male werewolf characters seemed like alpha males in the worst sense of the word: not telling her things just because they didn’t want to, arrogant and condescending by turns. I hate it when male characters assume they know what’s best for the heroine and treat her protestations as temporary fits of temper—disrespectful and infuriating. Nothing about these guys endeared them to me—I was being told they were great guys, but I wasn’t being shown anything to make me believe it.
The final straw for me was the first sex scene with one member of the pack—she told him she wasn’t going to sleep with him and what does he do? TIE HER UP IN THE WOODS. Because she really does want it, deep down. I flipped to the back to see if she ends up with him, saw that she does, and put the book in my Goodwill pile. No, thanks.
I love this book the most too. I re-read it at least once a year. There are only 4 books in the series that are from Elena’s POV. The 2nd and 3rd were good, but I loved Frostbitten (Kelley’s latest release). Elena is a complex character and the author doesn’t shut the reader away from the reality of shifter life.
I love the breakfast scene where they’re all together playing. The scene about Logan too got me. I love this world Kelley’s has built for us.
The prequels are good too from the men’s POV, but Bitten seems to be the one I always come back to. I think it’s watching her accept herself for the person she was before as well as finally accepting who she is that intrigues me.
..you’re missing an html code closer there.
‘ve seen so many good reviews of this book that I started reading it (well listening to it on audio and the reader has such a cool Canadian accent). At any rate, i was really enjoying it quite a bit, but then my world-building Nazi takes over—the one that jumps out every once in awhile when I read paranormals or scifi/fant that just can’t reconcile some of the mythology of the book I am reading—started to take over. I had so many questions that weren’t being answered. Like, if they knew women couldn’t shift into wolves why did Clay bite Elena in the first place? It seemed so illogical.
And then if Elena could become a wolf, why her? Why not other women? Why wouldn’t the wolves figure that maybe Elena isn’t that unique and try to figure out a way to make other female wolves?
I think of Lynn Viehl’s Darkyn series where she set up a very similar premise and then began to answer those very questions is a way that was a both revelatory and quite logical in the scheme of her world. She is great world builder.
So now I am wondering does Armstrong ever address this. And my enjoyment gets a bit dimmed because I can’t start something and commit to , what, 10 books, only to find that in the end the mythos just doesn’t seem logical.
Thanks for the heads up about the code – all fixed. I missed an “a.”
And Elena’s past and the reason for her successful transformation are slowly hinted and revealed in centimeters in subsequent books, especially Frostbitten.
I’m afraid I couldn’t make it more than a hundred pages or so in on this book. Elena as a heroine drove me spare for a few reasons. 🙁
One, I couldn’t get past the fact that she had a relationship going with this other guy (I forget his name and can’t look it up since I took the book to the local used bookstore), and yet she was dishonest with him about why she up and took off. And continued to be dishonest with him calling him back at least once. That Clay was the apparent destined True Love of the plot was no excuse for this, IMO.
Two, I had huge issues with how despite the fact that she was harboring a grudge against the pack in general and Clay in particular for turning her, she came running back when they called for her, and yet couldn’t muster enough gumption to actually have it out with Clay about why she’s so pissed off at them all. The scene I remember reading had her lowering her eyes and whispering “You bit me” by way of confrontation. That was the best she could do after ten years of being severely pissed off about this? I was thinking as I read “for cripes’ sake, woman, you’re a werewolf. Show some teeth!”
Related to this, I had equally huge issues with how she let this man tie her up in the first place. If she’s that pissed off with him even after ten years, why on earth is she letting him get away with that? (This was about as far as I got in the book before I bailed.)
Three, the whole backstory of how Elena got turned in the first place vexed me, since it essentially amounted to Elena being stupid and approaching (what seemed to be) a big unfamiliar dog, despite a token warning. And the token nature of the warning was annoying as well. Clay very clearly meant to turn her, and at least in the portion of the book I read, showed no sign of even realizing how very much he’d pissed off and hurt this woman by pulling that on her, and how she was still pissed off about it ten years later.
It speaks well of her work though that she can engender such strong and opposing reactions, nonetheless! I grant that since I bailed early on the book it’s possible that things could have improved as the plot continued, and I’m willing to be convinced. 😉 I will note that aside from these points I had no issues with Armstrong’s writing; it was good solid prose. It’s just that these particular characters were very much just not working for me.
I’ve heard rumblings from local friends that they also really disliked Elena as a heroine but liked other works of Armstrong’s, so I’m also willing to be pointed at other books of hers that might have heroines that would work for me better!
I’m a huge fan of this book also, but I did think books 2 and 3 were anywhere near as good. When I recommend this book, I always tell folks not to read the sequels.
It’s so hard to say why I like it, but maybe it’s because Elena’s so justifiably mad and yet if she doesn’t let it go she’ll ultimately be hurting herself. I guess it’s about accepting the cards you are dealt and that’s a powerful message.
I absolutely loved this book. I can see and understand your points of view. I felt the book was so much more than girl meets boy, boy bites girl and HEA. I found the issues you have with the book part of the story. Elana doesn’t want her duel life. She is fighting against it with everything she posses like she has her entire life. Elana doesn’t want to be a part of the pack. She doesn’t want to feel the way she does. The boyfriend she leaves in Canada is just part of the life she thinks she is suppose to have. It is more her playing a part. The boyfriend doesn’t even know she is a werewolf. I think the story is more about Elana finding herself, liking herself, excepting what she is than her journey to find her mate. Just my opinion.
I loved this book too. Having read most of the rest of the series, this one is still my favorite. I agree with Lizzie that the male werewolves “seemed like alpha males in the worst sense of the word: not telling her things just because they didn’t want to, arrogant and condescending by turns.”
However, I saw this as the beginning of a paradigm shift in the werewolf world that Armstrong created. Elena is the *only* female werewolf; no others have ever survived. So, until Elena’s existence, not only was this world male-dominated, it was male only. The men of the pack see her as a sister and yet also don’t know how to interact with her.
As far as Elena capitulating to the pack’s wishes, she complies of her own volition, not just blindly following Jeremy. Compared to the male members of the pack, Elena doesn’t just fall in line—she decides what she wants to do when she wants to do it. It just so happens that her actions are what the pack wants, mostly because Elena loves Jeremy like a father and can’t give up Clay, so what she wants for them is beneficial to them.
I also found Clay’s arc to be quite compelling. He is by no means a nice guy, but going from an orphaned feral cub to part of a pack to part of a relationship is a huge journey. Even though he’s overbearing, I could also see him trying to be the man Elena wanted him to be. He knows she will leave him if he doesn’t act appropriately and she follows through on that threat.
Strangely or not, aside from Armstrong’s werewolves, I can’t seem to enjoy werewolf Paranormal Romance. I’m always looking for recommendations, though along the lines of “if you like Bitten, you’ll like [this].”
Not too long ago I reviewed Armstrong’s “Personal Demon” for SFSignal.com. I should be reviewing her “Men of the Otherworld” books in the near future as well.
I didn’t really like Elena that much as a main character, and I kind of hated Clay, his character always felt borderline abusive to me. I liked Armstrong’s writing and world setup, though, so I kept going in the series and found that I really loved some of the later books/characters (in particular, I enjoyed the books about Paige and Jaime, a witch and necromancer respectively). I actually think the character switching is one of the strongest elements in the series; it makes the world-building more complex by allowing you to experience it from different perspectives and keeps main character couples from getting too boring.
My favorites of her books are actually her young adult books, the Darkest Powers series. They’re set in the same world, but you don’t really need to have read her other books to understand anything. There’s not too much romance as of yet (there have been 2 books), but you can tell she’s got her main couple on the slow burn.
Why do so many paranormal romances take place in upstate NY? This one, BDB…what is it about thermal underwear and pickup trucks that inspires thoughts of unnatural beasties and dirty sex?
dangrgirl—I know men who don’t condescend to their sisters or dismiss their feelings because they (the men) really know what’s best for them. I mean, yeah, she’s the first/only woman in an all-male world—but that excuse doesn’t hold with me. She was being treated as a little sister, not as an equal.
No matter how many times I move and how many books I donate to make said moving less cumbersome, I always make sure I have a copy if Bitten. Now I have it on kindle so it’s even easier, but still, I always try to make sure I have one on hand when I decide to read this book.
I think that what made me love this book are the actual human emotions that are involved. It takes Elena 10 freaking years to come to terms with being bitten and changed. Whereas most romance heroines come to terms with this life altering truth in a matter of pages consisting of lots of ridiculous sex and petulance. Elena had real psychological issues, she had a way of coping and dealing with them, along comes Clay to screw it all up and she has to adjust again, and yeah, it takes her awhile. It makes sense as a person and not just as a vessel for the hero’s sperm.
I don’t like Armstrong’s subsequent books as much. I think Bitten is MUCH stronger as a stand alone and is weakened by the rest of the series, but Armstrong is such a skilled writer that I read them and love them anyway, but I always start with Dime Store Magic and leave Bitten separate and special in my head.
Add me to the LOVE THIS BOOK section because I do. I loved it from go. Elena captivated me from the very beginning. Through her eyes, we see her intense desire to have something she’s longed for all her life and now because of being bitten, never will. I thought her level of anger, disillusionment and delusion were all very real and mesmerizing.
Seeing it all from her point of view also made the nuances of each character more pronounced for me. Especially once she changed her mind or perspective concerning their motiviations.
The scene that stood out for me was when she finally told how Clay bit her. It was such a total breach of her trust—there she thought that she was in to sell Jeremy on the relationship between she and Clay. My heart broke for her being there in the middle of Jeremy who wanted to put an end to a relationship between the two and Clay who made a desperate bid to keep her with that falsely innocent nip on the hand. Elena feels so cheated and rightly so. Not easy to just forgive and get over that breach, and I don’t think the book pretends like she does.
I love complex story and this one is multi-layered and whenever I re-read it, I find some little subtle detail that becomes apparent in the subsequent reading.
Thanks for the review, Sarah!
But why would they treat her as an equal? The pack has never had to deal with a woman werewolf before. They don’t even deal with the mothers of their children.
*Thread Hijack*
By the By, who won the Caption that Cover: Collarbone Edition?
Okay—carry on then.
Maybe there’s no reason they would (although it seems like very human behavior, since actual wolves operate under a two-parent partnership of alpha male and alpha female), but it sure turned me off of the book. Like I said, a DNF for me. I couldn’t get past the dynamics between Elena and the male werewolves, and I hated the way Elena seemed to draw boundaries (“I’m leaving!” “Don’t touch me!”) and then gave in anyway.
I loved BITTEN too and you’re making me want to re-read it. I bought the original hard cover version only published in Canada before it was picked up the the US publisher and turned into a hit.
I was blown away recently to see that Walrus (a highbrow literary magazine in Canada) just did a story on Kelley and her wolves. “Dances with Werewolves”. Google it, Sarah. I think you’ll find it interesting. Me, I was just thrilled to see Kelley getting taken seriously by the Canliterati. She so richly deserves it and all her success.
@Lizzie and @Lil’ Deviant—
This is how I see it too. This is the first time this all-male world has had to confront having any interactions with women that they don’t control. They can’t have daughters, they never knew their own mothers, and they’ve never had sisters. They’ve never had to deal with even the idea of treating a woman as an equal let alone anything else. Elena demands she be treated equally and leaves the pack when she’s not—an action that is simply not an option for the rest of the pack members. They would never even consider doing that. In fact, leaving a pack usually means death, something that’s demonstrated by how they treat Karl, one of the few solo werewolves. They don’t treat Elena the same way they treat Karl, which smacks of paternalism, but it’s who these guys are and it’s part of why Elena struggles with this new world. When she returns to the pack it’s on her terms. She redefines a packmate’s relationship and dependence on the pack.
I don’t really consider Bitten to be Paranormal Romance, mostly due to these issues. Armstrong examines gender roles in a way I don’t usually see in Romance and so I approached this book differently than I would a Romance.
:spoiler:
Karl is later admitted into the pack and is the hero in “Personal Demon.” While Karl is somewhat interesting, I don’t think Armstrong made as strong a case for redemption as she did for Clay. I like that throughout the remaining books, Clay continues to struggle in his relationships, something that seems to fit a character who endured so much early in his life.
@Lizzie:
I think it’s interesting that we’re seeing the emergence of an alpha female in a werewolf pack. The pack will have to redefine itself with the addition of Elena, and even more so in later books when she and Clay start a family.
It was Armstrong’s editorial choice to not model her werewolves so strictly on the two-parent wolf-pack hierarchy. I suspect this change enabled her to examine some gender issues, or maybe she just thought it was cool. 😉
Regarding the idea of equality, as I understand it, wolf packs have rigid and elaborate hierarchies. There is no sense of equality; every member has her/his place in a kind of micro caste system.
I am a total Kelley Armstrong junkie. Although none can touch the complexity of Bitten, the Darkest Powers YA series, Dime Store Magic, and No Humans Involved (Jeremy and Jaime). I like that she doesn’t slap a white picket fence ending on her stories. Each of the endings seems to compliment the personalities and the needs of the couple.
Thanks for reviewing Bitten. I have loved this book because it is complicated. I just finished Frostbitten, which resolves many of the power dynamics, but really just isn’t as interesting.
Regarding the idea of equality, as I understand it, wolf packs have rigid and elaborate hierarchies. There is no sense of equality; every member has her/his place in a kind of micro caste system.
My understanding was that wolves in the wild are structured like nuclear families: a mated couple above the other members. So everyone below the mated couple would be equal, in the sense that they’re all “siblings” to one another. It’s the wolves kept in captivity that see a more “micro-caste” system (wolves challenging each other, beta wolves, the existence of an omega/lowest-rung wolf, etc), because they don’t have enough territory to accomodate them.
That’s kind of a tangent, though. Obviously, Armstrong didn’t model her pack dynamics after wild wolves, because there are no females, so the packs aren’t headed by a mated couple.
My comment about her not being equal was in response to the idea that she was being treated as a sister—to me, that means that she should be treated just as equally as any other sibling under the pack leader. But she was not. Because she was female.
And yeah, the male werewolves never had to treat a woman as an equal before (because all the women they knew before her were humans, hence automatically inferior). But her being woman (inferior) still trumped her being a werewolf (superior). And I just didn’t want to read it. It felt too much like the sexist douchebaggery of human males.
It’s obvious the way Elena was treated didn’t bother a lot of folks—to each her own. I’ve really enjoyed other werewolf books that included some aspect of alpha-male arrogance, (Blood and Chocolate, the Mercy Thompson series), but this one just really bugged. I couldn’t get past the pack and Elena as a character to enjoy it. *shrug*
Oops—I meant to put that first paragraph in a quote box instead of italics.
@Lizzie:
Absolutely, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker to me because Elena was changing the paradigm. I can see how it might not work for another reader. I had the same problem with the first Kitty Norville book so much so that it was a DNF and I have yet to even try two others in the series on my TBR shelf. Ditto for just about every other werewolf Romance I’ve tried to read.
I didn’t like Elena until about halfway through the book. Like other commenters, her not-gonna-do-it then doing it bugged me. But I get why in the context of the story she did that, and her character really clicked with me once she started accepting her situation. My favorite Elena book in the series is actually Broken—mostly because of Clay. And I love that Elena is a pack enforcer. It bugs me in a shifter-verse when the women shifters don’t handle any of the dirty work, or when they just fight because they’re jealous or something equally ridiculous.
Paige is my favorite narrator in the series, although I cannot wait for Savannah to get her book.
Add me to the Armstrong Fangirl list. I’ve never read a werewolf/shifter book that struck me as deeply as this one. Elena is complex, goes completely against romance-novel-stereotype females and I felt her struggle during her entire journey. In fact, I loved all the characters because they weren’t black or white – instead, a wonderful rainbow of grays 🙂
Also love her Nadia Stafford books, because what’s not to love about a quiet, unassuming female assassin?
I just did a re-read of this book last month.
I like the Paige books better, but Bitten is definitely one of my favorites.
@dangrgirl – Definitely keep reading the Kitty books! They get much better. 😉
@Gina – I saw that Savannah was getting her own book and literally squee’ed in anticipation. She’s my absolute favorite female character of the entire series.
I picked up this book via this website (you gals are 90% up my alley when it comes to great recommendations!! I’ve actually started reading again!) and I adored it.
I was swept into the world—so different than what I expected. I assumed paranormals would be brooding, atmospheric, and mystical. Instead it was very matter-of-fact and completely believable that this could be a real phenomenon. I love that I got to go on Elena’s journey back to the Pack and back to her troubled relationship with Clay. I felt the way she was torn between two natures and her rage at her crappy childhood. I LOVED it when she kicked butt as a werewolf. And the scene toward the end with the Toronto boyfriend. Oh my.
Since then I’ve also enjoyed Stolen (I admit to hoping Jeremy would get a little romance with a ‘newby’) and Broken and Frostbitten is next on the list. But Bitten will probably be my favorite because it was my entrance into an amazing world created by Ms Armstrong.
Rereading the comments, I realized it seems like my biggest problem was the pack’s attitude toward Elena, but really it was Elena and Clay. Elena’s habit of saying she wanted (or didn’t want) something, and then backing down from her stance was maddening. And the first sex scene with Clay—that was the nail in the coffin for me. I mean, he ties her to a tree, she tells him, “This isn’t funny. Untie me. Now” and his response is to rip her T-shirt in half and undo her bra. Aaaaaand I was done.
It sounds like she shifts some of the power dynamics of the pack later in the book, but I couldn’t make it that far.
And now I’ll try to leave this post to the fans. 🙂
@Lizzie:
Stuff like that usually bothers me too, so I’ll have to go back and read it figure out why it didn’t bother me.
Lizzie, it sounds like you and I bailed at the same point of the book. That was pretty much the last thing I remember reading in it.
LOL on the “Aaaaaand I was done.”
This really just doesn’t sound like a book I’d like. This sounds like rape and a literal bodice ripper scene. No matter how angst ridden she is about accepting her dual worlds or whatever, this kind of stuff is usually enough for me to throw books against a wall. The hero of my dreams does not rape me while I work out my anger management problems. 🙁
Yup. I called it a “sex scene” above, but I don’t even know if they ended up having sex, because I stopped reading.
@Lizzie:
Now I have to wait four hours before I can get home and look this up. This kind of thing is usually a deal-breaker for me, but it’s been so long since I read it I can’t remember what happened.
Yeah, add my name to the “Didn’t Like” column, except that I pretty much HATED this book, for the exact reasons the other folks in the comments didn’t like it:
Clay tying up Elena for the first sex scene when she said no? GROSS GROSS GROSS.
Elena basically being a weak pushover doormat? GROSS GROSS GROSS.
Clay basically being a creepster with his room full of photos of Elena like some obsessive stalker serial killer? GROSS GROSS GROSS.
Blech. The whole book was bad, to me. Left a really bad taste in my mouth. Yuck.
@Lizzie:
Google Book Search has it (pages 134-136): http://books.google.com/books?id=-Zwpid_Mr1YC&lpg=PP1&dq=bitten&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q=untie&f=false
Clay doesn’t go through with it:
“I won’t force you, Elena. You like to pretend I would, but you know I won’t. All you have to do is tell me no. Tell me to stop. Tell me to untie you. I will.”
Put me in the I love this book camp. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon Bitten, but once I did, I was hooked. I’ve read the entire seriesm but for me, Elena is the one that sticks with me the most (Eve and Jaime are second and third).
Elena did everything she could think of to pretend she was normal, but in the end, she knew it was useless. The Pack was going to call to her and she was going to answer. Though she and Clay begin their relationship, she by no means forgives him right away. While she’ll have sex with him, there is a part of her that holds back, one she admits to readily in subsequent books. Their road to a HEA isn’t a easy one, but one well worth reading.
I LOVE this book! It was my first paranormal romance. I love that Elena had to fight so hard to figure out who she was and how she fit in with the Pack and how she could also like herself at the same time. I think her internal debate about how “normal” people wouldn’t do anything violent and, since she had violent tendencies and wasn’t normal, and how she came to terms with that part of herself was so interesting. And that first sex scene didn’t bother me because it was obvious that Clay and Elena had played violent sex games in the past and she really did want to have sex with him. She was able to pretend like she didn’t want to so she wouldn’t hate herself. But Clay gave her a chance to really back out and she didn’t.
She’s tied up. She’s told him no. She describes herself as trying to pull away from his touch because she doesn’t want to climax with him. And when she doesn’t say anything in response to his “Tell me to stop,” (not a yes or no) he pushes into her. It definitely wasn’t an enthusiastic consent to sex.
I mean, I’ve read and enjoyed books that dealt with the hero or heroine fighting their own attraction/desire to have sex and having to be seduced/enticed past a certain point before they get enthusiastic. With this book, I dunno—I think at that point it was just too late for me. I was already struggling to become invested in these two characters, specifically because of her continual acquiescence to the men around her (against her own wishes), and the arrogant expection of those men that she would do what they wanted. And I know women who, in that situation (tied up, at someone’s mercy, half-naked), would’ve already shut down and just let him do whatever he wanted.
I just couldn’t keep reading.