Bite me, Coombs.

Recently, a friend had me read Bitten by Kelley Armstrong. I finally finished it, and I thought I'd write up a little review.

In all honesty, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Armstrong has tendency to overwrite and give information that the reader doesn't need in order to understand simple conversations that are about to happen. There was a lot of information that could have easily been inferred through dialogue that Armstrong somehow felt was better put in page-long-paragraph exposition.

We all know how I feel about page long paragraphs. Don't use them, please. It only makes your work harder for your readers to follow.

As for the story, it was simple and a little flat. The main character, Elena, was supposed to have deep character flaws rooted in an unfortunate childhood, but almost none of those flaws played out in the story. The main bulk of the novel was focused on the relationship between Clay and Elena, and even after so many pages devoted to the two of them I couldn't bring myself to care what happened.

The novel poses some intriguing ideas about werewolves and their living in the real world, but for me there simply wasn't enough done with it.

The only character I found myself liking was one who was kept offscreen the entire time before being found dead. I won't tell you who that was, in case you decide to read it after all.

I know I'm probably going to get a lot of grief for bashing this book so much, but I honestly can't see why this story appeals to so many people. It had a lot of potential, but Armstrong simply neglected to see any of it through.

That and her constant use of the word "normalcy", which I still insist is not an actual word.

Now, in all fairness, this book is supposed to be an opener to Elena's story, so there was a lot of information that needed to be given, however, Armstrong didn't use her words so neatly. She has tendency to use twenty words where she could've used four, and I noticed after a while that I could skip whole segments of backstory and still completely understand what was going on.

Like I've said in my posts before, if your reader can figure out the backstory without you having to give it to them, it's best not to give it at all. Backstory is often better information for the writer to know and imply and for the reader to infer.

All in all, I would give this novel one out of five stars, even though I was hoping to no end that I would find a way to like it. Armstrong, I'll likely never read you again.

[love]

{RD}