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Just imagine that when you were five years old, your parents were horribly killed in a car accident, and you were left alone all night by their bloodied bodies until help arrived the next day. Imagine the horrors you lived with as you were shunted from one foster home to another, as your nightmares and screaming ensured that you never had a stable home. Imagine that eventually you were molested by deviant foster parents who took advantage of your trauma.  You grew up fast and tough, and fortunately saw a way out of your hell by getting the best education you could so that you could control your own destiny.

You are in college and meet the man of your dreams, who seems to know what you’ve suffered and loves you in spite of your prickly nature. You become engaged, and travel with him to meet his father. While there, imagine that your fiance turns into a werewolf and bites you…

That’s the premise behind Kelley Armstrong’s first book, Bitten, published in 2001. It’s a different take on the popular werewolf theme, one that grounds it in reality. The book is narrated by Elena Michaels, 10 years after her unwilling conversion to werewolf status by her werewolf fiance Clayton Danvers. She is the only female werewolf in existence, and she has been tormented with rage, insanity, and confusion as she lived with Clay and his father Jeremy, who is the alpha of the small werewolf community in upstate New York. While she mostly adjusts to her changed life, she longs to return to Toronto and finish college, and seize the life she had dreamed of during her childhood.

Things are complicated because she zig zags between deep love and towering rage for her mate Clay.  He loves her unwaveringly, even after she leaves him to go back to Canada. The book opens with her in a new life living with a new man in Toronto, when Jeremy contacts her asking her to return to help deal with a pack emergency. She returns reluctantly, planning to be gone no more than a few days.

Elena is tough, smart, and witty as hell. Armstrong has done an outstanding job of  creating characters that are very believable as wolves in people bodies. Many werewolf stories just have them turning furry once a month, but otherwise they think and behave just as humans do. Clay, Elena, and Jeremy (and the other werewolves) are quite different, and you see that clearly in the way Elena thinks.

Clay in particular is very “wolfie” – there is nothing human in the way he reacts to people and their affairs, the way he is quick to kill anyone who threatens his Alpha and his pack, and in the way he loves Elena. He is drop-dead gorgeous as well as brilliant, and has a PhD in anthropology. You can’t help but love him while at the same time wondering what it would really be like to live with him…

Jeremy is also the product of a tortured childhood, having been raised by his psychotic and sadistic werewolf father. He grew up with a deep sense of responsibility, giving up his dreams in order to take care of his family, his adopted son Clay, and eventually the pack who made him Alpha.

I wouldn’t call this a paranormal romance, as those tend to be “fluffier” in tone and content. And lots of hot sex tends to dominate the romance genre. Bitten is more of a paranormal thriller (or realistic fantasy, or urban paranormal…), whereby the 3 main characters have to defeat the “mutts” – non-pack werewolves who threaten the pack’s lives and territory. The conflict is bloody and violent, with no remorse shown for eliminating the threat. Good guys die too, at the hands and jaws of the mutts.

Under this storyline, Clay and Elena struggle with their relationship. Clay makes no secret of the fact that Elena is the only woman for him and he wants her to stay. But he doesn’t try to force her, and she is torn between her attraction and love for Clay and the new life that she’s got a toehold in. The conflict is realistically portrayed and fascinating. There is an underlying sad note of dreams given up because of actions of another,while at the same time offering a life and love that is immensely satisfying. Just as in the real world, there may not be a candy-coated happy ending for everyone. Life is indeed what you make of it.

There’s plenty of sizzle between Clay and Elena and I loved every scene that they have.  Thankfully, Armstrong doesn’t rely on cliched phrases and euphemisms for body parts or sex acts, nor does she flood the book with steamy but gratuitous sex scenes. The encounters are integral to the plot and are well placed. I’m totally in love with Clay, even if he IS an unsociable bastard!

The Women of the Otherworld consists of (at present) 10 books, several of them with the werewolves and Elena featured. The second book on the series, Stolen, picks up where Bitten leaves off. Here, Elena is kidnapped by a psycho billionaire who is collecting other-worlders in order to steal their powers. We meet other characters – witches, demons, vampires – that in turn have their own books in the series. Elena returns as narrator in book 6, Broken, and again in book 10, Frostbitten .  A book I LOVED in this series is Men of the Otherworld,  which has the stories of Jeremy and Clayton as well as some of the other men.  The guys are to die for!

If you’re a fan of paranormals but hate the cheesy stuff, give this series a try, particularly the werewolf books. I haven’t read all of  the others yet, but I love Armstrong’s writing and will pick them up when I finish with Frostbitten. Enjoy!