Review: Motor City Wolf by Cindy Spencer Pape

Title: Motor City Wolf Series: Urban Arcana #3 Author: Cindy Spencer Pape Publisher: Carina Press Published: August 29, 2011 My Copy: NetGalley Less than a year ago, Fianna Meadows was a pampered noble in the Faerie court. Then she was exiled, turned mortal and forced to work for a living—in a werewolf bar in Detroit, no less! Still, Fianna has to admit her new life isn’t so bad…particularly when it comes to Greg Novak, the bar’s sexy owner. For Greg, keeping his hands off Fianna has been a challenge. But his sense of honor won’t let him get involved with a woman put in his care, even if Fianna is eager to explore her new feelings of lust. Resisting the temptation to claim her gets even harder when Greg’s grandfather, the region’s Alpha, orders him to marry and Fianna agrees to pretend to be his chosen mate. Fighting his attraction to Fianna isn’t Greg’s only problem. Someone is killing werewolves and attacking other paranormal beings in Detroit. He vows to do whatever it takes protect both his pack and Fianna—even if that means giving her up…

This is the third installment in the Urban Arcana series. Admittedly, I haven’t read the two books that came before this one and maybe if I had my review would be different. Although, it’s predecessors did center around Fae and Witches which don’t appeal to me nearly as much as werewolves. This novel was an okay read but I won’t be exploring this series any further.

Before writing my review I read a few of the ones that came before mine to get a feel for what I missed by skipping over the first two books. Apparently many of the characters are present throughout this series and I missed out on quite a bit of their background stories. That being said, a good author should refresh their readers’ minds in every new installment and help to bring cheaters like myself somewhat up to speed. From what I was able to piece together, I believe that Cindy Spencer Pape did a good job of accomplishing this. Overall, I think I had a pretty good feel for the characters but it’s hard to know for sure without actually reading the whole Urban Arcana series.

I found that the multitude of supernaturals made this book somewhat convoluted. There’s werewolves, wizards, demons and fae. I found it difficult to keep track of who was what and also of what the various races distinguishing traits were. This novel isn’t very long and as a result, packs way too much information in too few pages. There’s also two main plotlines in this story. Fee and Greg’s evolving romantic relationship and a serial killer who’s offing werewolves. I think Cindy tried to throw some action into a book that was meant to be primarily a Paranormal Romance. As a result, I found that the main couple’s love story was rushed and because of this I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. I liked Fee and Greg as characters but when their story jumps from them tentatively considering dating each other to being married and having twins it was a tough pill to swallow. I think that if Pape would have focused on just the love story this book would have been a more enjoyable read.

Another thing that irked me was how the term Underhill is used. It’s basically the land of the Fae but it was turned into an expression and I’m not sure what the author’s goal was in doing this. For me it was more of an annoyance than anything and I viewed it as a repeated grammatical error. This little detail probably won’t bug most readers but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

I’d advise anyone interested in reading this book to start from the beginning of this series. Hopefully in doing so this will transform into a more enjoyable read but for me it’s too little too late. Motor City Werewolf has some good qualities but most of them were lost on me. I guess that’s what I get for being sucked in by a werewolf read without thoroughly researching it beforehand.

---

Website / Facebook / Twitter

Buy from Carina Press

---

Related Posts