I was lucky to put off reading Wolf Pact, Part I until Wolf Pact, Part II came out. I am not going to have hunger pains until November when Wolf Pact, Part III makes its way to my Kindle. Before I review Wolf Pact, Part II, I want to use my review of Wolf Pact I as background:
" Love it! De la Cruz does not disappoint with her take on werewolves. This first part gives you the background for the series.
We begin with the wolves not surprisinglg as Blue Blood fans will be familiar with Bliss, once a blue-blooded Fallen angel and vampire used as a vessel for evil against her will, now redeemed in a seemingly a weak human with a powerful task: she is charged by her mother with bringing her estranged father Lucifer's hounds back to the side of heaven and she had no idea how to do it and find them all while adapting to her new powerless human body. On Bliss's side is her Aunt Jane, a reincarnation of her little sister and Lucifer's sister, who also fights for heaven.
Of the wolves, we learn that before they become hellhounds at 18, the soulless killing machines of Hell...wolves are mere innocent shackled slaves who dream of freedom from their demon masters. They are bred for their masters purposes and literally chained to prevent escape. Like slaves, much of their wolf history and even their original language (Hroll) has been ripped from them but they remember that once they were free, once they did not serve Hell and some yearn for that freedom.
It is these wolf slaves that yearn for freedom and seem destined to achieve it against all odds that seem to be on a collision course with Bliss. But both Bliss and these freed wolves, led by their alpha Lawson--a name he gives himself, leaving behind the name his masters gave him--are not safe by the friends they left behind who have been turned into the soulless hellhounds that Lawson and his friends ran to escape becoming.
De la Cruz's new werewolf tale is a powerful being to a fantasy/horror story, an interesting twist on a slave narrative, and a wonderful addition to the Blue Blood world she has so vividly created. I hope this is the beginning of a new series of books."
Wolf Pact II truly delivers. Done with introductions and backgrounds, though we learn more about the wolves we read along, Wolf Pact II finds us panting for information on Tala and the first rumble between the wolves and the hellhounds hunting them. Deliciously, De la Cruz holds out on telling us Tala's fate---or part of it---until the very end though a reader can infer volumes from Bliss's trip to an Ohio mental hospital.
Going undercover, Bliss and her severely underused Aunt Jane investigate a mysterious Ohio fire that wreaks of hellhound activity. I felt like I was watching an episode of Supernatural, replacing Sam and Dean for two former vampires, as Bliss and Jane went covert as academics writing about spontaneous compustion. Their undercover work will lead them further in their search for hellhounds (to the mysterious survivor of the mysterious fire sitting in a mental hospital) but at great cost to Bliss and Jane's burgeoning dynamic duo.
The wolf pack led by their alpha Lawson and joined by a mysterious wolf pact. There is no getting around how De la Cruz manages to keep things mysterious--and full of suspense-while slowly peeling off the layers of this new series. For everything we learn about the wolves, the hellhounds and Bliss's quest, we are left with burning questions. The dichotomy between good and evil vampires in Blue Bloods is represented here again with wolves acting as the pure Blue Bloods and the hellhounds acting as the silver-blooded vampire brethren, an equally soulless nemesis. Though the wolves are clear that they feel the Blue Bloods abandoned them to be shackled into slavery in Hell and there is much love lost there.
The collison course set up by Wolf Pact I explodes as the wolves and Bliss discover each other, both wary and without complete knowledge of each other's origins. The wolves are suspicious of Bliss's true intentions thinking she is a red-blooded human spy for the hellhounds. Bliss makes one cultural faux pas after another admitting she is a former Blue Blood vampire and that she cannot tell the difference between a wolf and a hellhound...making the reader wonder which her mother intended her to seek out. The wolves, having been abandoned to their fate by Blue Bloods, understand Bliss is part of their world but also part of the Fallen angels who left the wolves to be used for hell. The place of the Silver Blood vampires in all this wolf and hellhound lore is touched upon quickly but begs to be returned to. A Beaumchamp, of those East Hampton witches and warlocks and Norse gods, is crisscrossed in all this tying all the separate supernatural creatures together in a role I also hope will be fleshes out.
We learn, as was previously suspected, that Bliss is much more than an ordinary human even without her vampire powers. Her true name, Lupus Theiel aka Wolfsbane foreshadowed as much. And for now, the wolves and Bliss have a common enemy in the hellhounds...though different methods of fighting them that surprise both. Wolf Pact II is faster paced, thrillingly so and the October cliffhanger leaves the reader pining for November when the next edition will be released.
And wait, was that a love triangle thrown in for good measure? This episode finds Lawson and Bliss thrown together in violence that leaves them both suspicious but curious about each other as both suffer from broken hearts and loss. Will they heal their broken hearts with each other? And if so, where does that leave Lawson's beloved but broken Tala when only Bliss can tell him what happened to her after the wolves were forced to leave her in their first fiery confrontation with the hellhounds in Wolf Pact I.
I am not sure if Wolf Pact is meant to or can stand alone without the background from the Blue Bloods series (the Beauchamp series is pretty self-sufficient despite vamp cameos) but De la Cruz's take on werewolves is as fresh as her take on werewolves and if all goes well in the much anticipated Wolf Pact III and IV then this spinoff will really take off and hopefully become a series in its own right.