Nightshade (review)

Calla knows her future, even if she's not entirely thrilled with every detail. If she follows orders and unites with Ren Laroche, the annoying (but, of course, sexy) alpha of a rival pack of Guardians (werewolves, essentially, without the full-moon complication), they'll start a new pack together and she'll come into her own as a leader. All that changes when she falls for Shay, a human (and, of course, impossibly beautiful) boy with whom a relationship would be punishable by death. The strength of the story lies in the depiction of the power dynamics unbalancing Calla's world: each Guardian pack is led by a magical Keeper who rules the wolves autocratically, dictating everything from punishment to mating, and deploys them to protect Keepers' interests both sacred and trivial. Calla, who chafes under any challenge to her authority, gradually realizes that the social hierarchy she's always accepted hobbles her ability to protect her pack, particularly from the Keepers' whims. Despite the political twist, it's impossible to ignore the echoes of Klause's Blood and Chocolate (BCCB 7/97) here, and Nightshade, with its misaligned love triangle and more grandiose approach, suffers in the comparison. For all her strength as a leader, Calla undergoes a complete and unconvincing about-face when she collapses into puddles of angst at the very thought of Shay, and Shay himself is rather bland; it's hard to swallow him as a viable romantic rival to the much more interesting Ren. Nevertheless, both the structural conflict and the strongly developed secondary characters sustain interest, and creature-fantasy/romance fans who don't mind the big questions of the novel being answered with a cliffhanger will find much to enjoy here.