Books are Wonderful

Review: Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

Could have been great

Nightshade has the markings of a wonderful story, the plot was spectacular - wolves and witches, secrets, a mysterious ceremony and some very fun secondary characters. However, what made it quite the opposite were the main characters Calla and Shay. 

From the very beginning of the story, Andrea Cremer set up her love triangle, Calla, an alpha, saves the human Shay - for reasons she cannot understand - and has strong feelings of attraction towards him, yet she’s promised to Renier the alpha of another pack with whom she will be forming her own pack. This is the beginning of the story’s downfall. 

Calla (a wolf who can shift to human) is suppose to be a strong female lead, independent, smart, leader of her pack but she never shows this throughout the story. I almost feel as though she doesn’t care about her pack, she is mostly a selfish person who seems more influenced by someone she just met as opposed to people she has known forever.

Shay is annoying. He claims that Ren treats Calla like property while he basically tries to tell her what to do with her life. He does not understand her background and her culture, but he immediately assumes that everything she believes in is wrong and tries to changer her to someone he thinks is better, this is not love and it’s sad that this is what’s selling as love.

The other characters in the book - mostly the other wolves - behave much more like wolves than Calla. They were also much more interesting than Calla, and in a way I wish this was a story from one of their point of views rather than Calla’s. This is one book where I cared more about the secondary characters than I did about the protagonist. Even Ren - who, by the way, was suppose to be a bad boy, according to Shay and Calla - seems to be a stronger and more consistent character.

This book could have been a sophisticated novel, but in the end it was just fluff. It was a great story but it was tainted with the cheap thrill of a poorly constructed love triangle, and I don’t care enough about the love triangle or any of the main characters to carry on reading the rest of the trilogy. 

Publisher: Philomel || Details →

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