Big Bad Bite (Big Bad Bite #1) by Jessie Lane
It’s been almost a week since I read this book and I still have this gnawing feeling inside of me, compelling me to write a review (and if you’ve read some of my previous reviews you’d know that is not a good thing). Every now and again something would remind me of this book and I’d want to turn into an angry blabbering lunatic. So I am now giving up, I have to get his off my chest.
Beware!! Long rage rant to follow!
Let’s start from the beginning – I was looking for a nice PNR book with a kickass heroine and, in my humble opinion, you can’t get more kickass than a mysterious half shifter/half-something-else SWAT member, which according to the summary is our Jenna. I got my hopes up – such a big mistake on my part.
The book starts with Jenna having finally landed her dream job and moving away from her suffocating family. Naturally my expectations were that some of the story would revolve around her hard-won independence and enjoying it or around finding her place in the squad and proving herself, or forming relationships. However, those aspects were very underdeveloped. Jenna should have been this tough cookie but at the first sign of trouble she heads home to her Momma like a scared little puppy, which absolutely undermines her image. From this point on my problems with the book really kicked off. For someone who has spent their whole life hiding I saw the heroine as too trusting, too easily accepting the possessive gestures, all the protectiveness and sometimes even the orders from all the alpha males around her. All the issues that should have come with her past – the fact that her father never bothered to come and meet his child, the suffocating environment in which she has grown (home schooled and living with her family up until that point), the loneliness from never having friends – are hardly mentioned/considered. The book should have stressed upon these problems instead of the mushy feelings caused by her teenage crush on Adam. Yes, I did use the word “crush” for their supposed “mate-relationship” because, in my eyes, their love was not believable, I just didn’t feel it. It was like they met twice and BOOOOM she was his and it was all settled. Her fur should have been rubbed the wrong way from all of his domineering gestures but noooo they just stirred some confusing emotions in our supposedly independent full-of-attitude tough girl.
While I am on the subject of this very implausible instalove, I should mention that there was a moment when I really hoped that the author would redeem herself. However, that hope died a slow and painful death. This moment of fragile optimism, when Adam should have had some hard time winning our heroine’s affections, was when Amy told Jenna that our alpha must mate her because if he doesn’t, he will go mad. Every other girl would have started seriously doubting Adam’s show of affections and his motives but not Jenna, she is understanding and those doubts are only expressed by a few fleeting thoughts.
Actually, Jenna’s understanding knows no limits; she isn’t even remotely disturbed by the fact that she has a long lost brother. She is just like “oh ok, no biggie” and starts treating a total stranger like a sibling that she has lived with all her life.
Before I wrap it all up on the subject of Jenna, I should mention that she is a virgin, which in this situation is expected. To me, however, that was the cherry on top of the cake. Of course, Jenna’s first time was totes amazeballs which is absolutely believable…NOT. God, I hate virgins.
Anyways, moving on.
Adam, you could have been such a great guy. You probably are. Unfortunately, we never got the chance to really meet you. There are only two chapters from his POV and that deprived us from getting to know him as a character. We know nothing of him as a person. There aren’t any glimpses of his past and his family is kind of a mystery, except for his overly friendly sister Amy. The only things we know about him are that he is a bounty hunter (mentioned only once) and that he is an Alpha of a pack. Here we stumble upon the next big plot hole – the pack doesn’t play any role in the story. We meet only two of its members and the rest is just background. Our main characters are wolf shifters, therefore, the pack should be a big part of their life, even bigger due to the fact that Jenna never had one. Last but not least, I feel like I should note Adam’s lack of presence during a big part of the book – because of his absence his role turns from major into minor. And with that, my discussion of him ends.
This is leading me to the final nail in the coffin – the awful writing style. For half of the book we are meeting new guys and, of course, all of them are big gorgeous domineering alpha males. Note to authors: not all men should be alphas or devastatingly handsome, readers could get sick of all those manly men. The process of introducing new characters was always following these four steps:
1. We need information
2. “I know someone who knows someone who knows something. Let’s go meet him!”
3. Enters next gorgeous guy.
4. He doesn’t have any info but he knows someone who possibly knows something.
That repeats at least four times in the span of 60 pages.
It was irritating and made me think about quitting this book half way through it. The only thing that kept me going was my stubbornness. But that’s not all – every time the characters went somewhere, it was followed by unending explanations about the club or house in question. These useless details, which served to only fill out the pages, were sometimes mixed with Jenna’s confused mushy feelings, which only contributed to my already growing irritation. The author demonstrated an amazing talent of making a fast-paced story seem like an endless account of meetings. I was utterly bored and annoyed by the fact that the new guys just kept piling up. The readers become so preoccupied with all the explanations or trotting to the next new guy that they can’t get to know any of the characters or come to care for them. As a matter of fact, all of the new guys were more memorable than our main hero Adam, who was absent during all these meetings (as I mentioned above).
After all the introductions (including a bizarre and unnecessary appearance of Jenna’s mother) are made, we are put on a plane for Germany. This is the point where the story absolutely lost its momentum and I went from “No” to “Hell no!”. Why the author felt the need to put us on a wild goose chase half the world away when she had all the ingredients to make maybe not a great, but a good enough story, I have no idea. I confess that, after only five days, this part of the book is already a little foggy to me, which should tell you enough about how memorable the last 50 pages were. The author tried to write a fast and dramatic ending but I personally had already given up and just prayed that the book would die a quick death.
Lastly, I should mention that, somewhere buried beneath all the debilitating descriptions and details, there was a bit of good humour (the moment with the coffee) and world building that had some good points like the explanation of vampires and demons. Of course, the author couldn’t help herself and had to ruin it for me with the story of shifter evolution (WTF?!). At this point it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there were also some major gaps in the world she built that crippled the story but who cares anymore… I certainly don’t.
~El
Dirty Little Books 