Thursday, June 13, 2013

Review: A Certain Wolfish Charm Review

Title: A Certain Wolfish Charm

Author: Lydia Dare

Date of Publication: April 2, 2010

Formats Available: Paperback, E-Book

Buy This BookAmazon

Synopsis: In Lydia dare's debut trilogy, Regency England has gone to the wolves! "He gets crankier and crankier as the moon gets full..."

The rules of Society can be beastly-especially when you're a werewolf and it's that irritating time of the month. Simon Westfield, the Duke of Blackmoor, is rich, powerful, and sinfully handsome, and has spent his entire life creating scandal and mayhem. It doesn't help his wolfish temper at all that Miss Lily Rutledge seems not the least bit afraid of him, and in fact, may be as untamable as he is...

"A woman whose charm is stronger than the moon..."

When Lily's beloved nephew's behavior becomes inexplicably wild, she turns to Simon, the boy's cousin and guardian, for help. But Simon's idea of assistance is far different than hers, and Lily finds herself ensconced in his house and engaged to the rogue.

They both may have bitten off more than they can chew when each begins to discover the other's darkest secrets...

My Review: 

With a historical setting, plenty of romance, and werewolves A Certain Wolfish Charm seemed like the perfect novel for me. However, it soon became apparent that this novel wasn't all I hoped and dreamed it would be. With no plot and shallow characters, I quickly found myself getting bored with the story and struggling to finish the novel. Even though the idea was a good one it was very poorly executed.

Although the idea for A Certain Wolfish Charm is a good one the plot just didn't pan out.  The entire novel I kept waiting for a plot to take shape but one never did. Even though things happened it never felt as though the events were leading up to a big finish at the end or that the characters were moving in more than just circles. I guess Lily finding out the Simon is a werewolf could be considered a plot but it just wasn't strong enough to keep the novel on track and to make the rest of the novel mean anything.

Quite possibly the most annoying thing about this novel was the insta-love. If there is one thing I can't stand its characters that instantly fall into absolutely perfect "true love" without even talking to each other first. The most aggravating part of insta-love is that the relationship never feels real. No matter what happens in the novel it always feels as though the characters are more in lust with each other than in love. A Certain Wolfish Charm was a prime example of the characters falling more in lust than in love, making both of them feel shallow and under developed.

Even though the writing was okay the author constantly used the same words to describe characters over and over and over again. I can't even begin to count the number of times I read the words "Lily's delectable form" in this novel. The farther and farther I got into this novel the more the repetitiveness started to get to me until I was skimming pages just to get through anything repetitive. Not only did the author use the same words over and over again but she used the same ideas over and over again. Throughout the entire novel I had to push through pages and pages of Simon and Lily think about how much they loved each other and how they could never admit it and so on. By the time they finally got together I was so annoyed with them I didn't even care anymore.

In the end I wouldn't recommend A Certain Wolfish Charm to anyone unless they were looking to be bored by shallow characters and a weak plot. Even though this novel did have its moments (mainly involving Will and Prisca, who weren't even main characters) it just wasn't enough to make the novel a good one.

2/5

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