When Marty Andrews gets bitten by a mangy mutt while walking her teacup poodle, her blond hair darkens, the hair on her legs starts growing at an alarming rate, and her mood swings put her dream job as a sales rep for Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics in serious jeopardy.
Then a drool-worthy man shows up at her door claiming that he accidentally bit Marty. And since he's a werewolf, she is now, too. Thinking Keegan Flaherty is clearly insane, Marty refuses to believe a word until a kidnapping makes her realize there's more at stake than just her highlights. And she must put her out-of-control life in the hands of the man who makes her blood run wild in more ways than one...
The Review:
Marty is a cosmetics sales lady, until one day she's bitten by a dog and her life turns upside down. According to the sexy man on her doorstep, the dog was him. He bit her by accident, but the thing is, he's a werewolf, so now she is too.
I so wanted to enjoy this book. I instantly loved Dakota Cassidy's writing style. It's fun and chatty with a great side of snark. But unfortunately I really struggled with this book. I don't have much attention span for books I dislike these days and rarely push through to the end if they don't have something worthwhile to drag me through. In this one, it was the unique voice that got me to the finish line, but the world building and characters made it a hard slog.
I just didn't connect with the main characters at all. Oddly, I was quite intrigued by the secondary characters, like Marty's friends, and they definitely helped me not put the book down, but both the hero and heroine really got on my nerves.
Marty is a sales lady and very invested in her job. At times she can be really sweet, but most of the time she's so self involved, as well as judgmental of those around her, that I could not sympathize with her at all. Instead, she infuriated me.
Keegan is the head of his pack, but doesn't want the job, or at least the politics involved. He's that extreme alpha that only werewolf alphas can really pull off, but for me he crossed the line from possessive and arrogant, to rude and simply obnoxious.
That said, no matter how much I disliked both Marty and Keegan, there is no denying their sexual tension throughout the story.
Outside of the romance, there were a lot of world building issues for me. The werewolf politics are quite crucial to the story, as well as Marty and Keegan's relationship, but there are a lot of holes in that political pack world. What initially seems like easy to understand politics becomes quite convoluted and nonsensical. Equally, in the suspense storyline, the sense of action is built up well, but, while the outcome is not predictable, it does seem to come out of nowhere, thrown in as a solution that doesn't really make sense with the rest of the story.
This was a difficult review to write, because I do think there are readers who might enjoy Accidental Werewolf. Unfortunately, I just wasn't one of them. I am definitely not ruling out reading more of Dakota Cassidy’s work though. I think her writing has some promising pizazz and in a different world, with different characters, I’d like to see what she could do. I'm not sure what sort of readers Marty would appeal to, but I know there are many readers who would like Keegan, with his distinctly rude attitude, particularly in combination with the sexual tension that Cassidy creates so well. So this one wasn't for me, but I guess it's possible it might be for you.
The Accidental Werewolf by Dakota Cassidy is a fantasy comedy romance, released by Berkley in 2008.
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