Bea's Book Nook: Bea Reviews Werewolf Sings the Blues by Jennifer Harlow

Monday, February 10, 2014

Bea Reviews Werewolf Sings the Blues by Jennifer Harlow

Publisher: Midnight Ink
Series: Midnight Magic Mystery #2
Format Read: eGalley
Source: from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 8, 2014
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

The last thing Vivian needs is to be thrust into a werewolf war.
If Vivian Dahl's life had a soundtrack, every song would be the Blues. She's pushing thirty, her singing career is going nowhere, and the partying lifestyle is taking its toll. Plus, a mysterious man is stalking her. But when she's abducted from a singing gig, Vivian is surprised to see her stalker become her savior. Jason is her werewolf rescuer sent by the biological father who abandoned her as a baby. Finding herself on the run, Vivian drives across America with the enigmatic Jason and learns about the werewolf war her father's pack is caught in. Now that an opposing pack has targeted her, Jason will stop at nothing to make sure Vivian's song isn't cut short.

Bea's Thoughts:

Last year I got the ARC for the first book in this series but took a long time to read it; in the meantime I also requested and received this book, the next one in the series. I ended up reading the two books back to back; I started this one just hours after finishing the first one. While I enjoyed both books, I don't think I'll be requesting any more ARCs in this series. Both were riddled with typos, spelling errors, clunky or confusing sentences, wrong words, etc. I don't know if the mess was cleaned up for the final copies but it detracted from my enjoyment of the stories.

Now, other than the lack of proofreading and copy editing, "Werewolf Sings the Blues" is a good story. The couple, Viv and Jason, were first introduced in "What's A Witch To Do?" but this story is set an unspecified number of years earlier than that book. Viv is a singer who's not doing well in her career, is feeling discouraged, uses drugs, and doesn't fit well in her family. Then she discovers that her mother has been keeping secrets about her biological father and the story takes off. I found Viv less relatable than Mona but eventually I warmed up to her; I think most of us have had family problems over the years and I felt for her, even when she was being the obnoxious one. Jason was also hard for me to warm up to; the story is told from Viv's perspective so we don't get to know him as well as we do her. He's also the strong, silent type and had an annoying tendency to withhold both information and his feelings. Though, when he does open up, he's quite eloquent.

The story is a mix of romance, road trip, action and a small mystery. I figured out the guilty party early on; Harlow telegraphs early on who it is, though I don't think it was intentional. Viv and Jason both do some stupid things in the course of the story but for the most part, their actions were believable. Viv likes to manipulate people which I found annoying but during the story she comes to see her behavior from a different perspective and strives to change her less desirable behaviors. I enjoyed that and appreciated that Harlow didn't make it seem easy or have it happen overnight.

Overall, "Werewolf Sings the Blues" is an okay story, slow at times, with some cliches and stereotypes, and darker than "What's A Witch To Do?", which was a cozy mystery paranormal romance. It's not anything special and the plethora of errors in the ARC was overwhelming at times but the story is fairly enjoyable and worth a try if you like paranormal romance.