Book Review: Nightshade (Nightshade #1) by Andrea Cremer

Title: Nightshade (Nightshade #1)
Author: Andrea Cremer
Pages: 452
Publication: October 19, 2010
Publisher: Philomel
Summary taken from goodreads:

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?

2.5 STARS - I LIKED IT ENOUGH

MY REVIEW:

This is not one of those books where the author has a huge info-dump in the beginning of the book, and for that, I am grateful. The book starts off action-packed and you slowly start piecing together Calla's world as the story progresses, which is great, or else I would have been completely bored for the majority of the book.

Because, as you can tell from the summary, Calla is in this epic love-triangle and spends the majority of the book torn between the two guys and the outcome that would occur depending on who she chooses. There's more to the plot than just the love-triangle, but the book pretty much focuses on it until the last one hundred pages where the plot finally picked up and became more intriguing. But honestly, I think that the author could have cut out one hundred pages of love-triangle lust/angst/indecisiveness from the middle of the book; it wouldn't have made much of a difference to the ending.

I'm still not sure if I even really like Calla. On one hand, her sense of responsibility and loyalty to her family and pack is admirable, and I really like her sibling bond with her brother. On the other hand, she's the alpha of her group and yet she spends the majority of the book constantly afraid. I understand that she has reason to be scared since she's breaking the rules and whatnot, but doesn't she have any courage?

Courage is being afraid of something and still manning up and doing it anyway. Calla only forces herself to do half of the stuff she's afraid of the consequences of because Shay is there to convince her to do it or because she basically has no choice. I mean, I found it hard to believe that she was the leader of her group through any of her actions.

Throughout the whole book, everyone is always saying that Ren and Calla are the alphas. Calla's group listens to her because she's the alpha. They look to her for leadership and follow her orders. But what does she do to warrant her position? For the majority of the book, she's a mess of teenage hormones or denial. One of her friends kept a secret from her for a while (although he has reason to, I guess) and another friend is bordering on disobeying/not listening to her by the end of the book. As alpha, her friends should trust her more and she shouldn't have had any of her pack disrespecting her.

If I hadn't already bought the sequel a while ago, I don't think that I would have continued this series, but I'm going to give it a second chance since Wolfsbane is a little shorter than Nightshade, which means that it has less to force myself through.

EDIT: I changed my mind. I'm not going to read the sequel. My TBR pile is ginormous enough as it is; I'm not going to waste my time forcing myself to read a book that I probably won't like. Unless someone can persuade me that Wolfsbane is a bazillion times better than Nightshade, I'm not going to touch that book.