After finding herself pregnant a few months after a ball that she’d attended, an American girl visiting England with her father found herself in the unhappy position of learning that the child’s father had been married shortly after getting her pregnant. And her father was demanding that they make things right, thus forcing Nathaniel, the younger brother of the man who had conceived the child, and Sophronia to be wed immediately in order to avoid a scandal. Clearly neither one of them was happy about the situation, but there appeared to be no other option open to them. (It should also be noted that neither Sophronia nor apparently the brother who impregnated her seem to remember the act itself. She didn’t even know she was pregnant until the child started moving within her.)
It wasn’t until after the birth of her daughter that Sophronia learned that she had married into a family of werewolves and that her daughter would grow up to be one as well. Terrified and not knowing what else to do, Sophronia ran away and boarded a ship bound for America with intent of returning to her parents' home. But other problems got in the way, and now she knows there is something else that she must accomplish before she can return to her husband and daughter.
I discovered this book after purchasing a program for a children’s play we attended & decided to purchase the audiobook version to review. The author is local to the area and it piqued my curiosity as I’d never heard of her or this series before.
Listening to the audiobook, I would guess that the narrator is British. She did a decent job creating unique voices for the characters, but something about the way she handled the American southern accent of Sophronia and later several other American characters just grated on my nerves, though I can’t really explain why. As for the characters and the story, there were a number of questions that I had, a few of which appeared to be explained, others just left for us to wonder about.
This is definitely a book that is not appropriate for younger readers, as it does contain some rather graphically detailed sex between the two main characters. Also, some listeners might take offense at the language used when referring to various females in the story, and while some of those terms may turn out to be justified, others do not. But at the same time, I believe that it was possible that the author was using those terms as a means of depicting werewolf attitudes about many things rather than as an intended insult.
Overall, I’m not entirely sure what my opinion on this book is. I also haven’t decided whether or not to continue on with the next in the series. So on this one, you’ll just have to decide for yourselves if it sounds like something you might or might not enjoy.