(SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
After reading the first book in this series I was genuinely left intrigued. The mentions of the cirque de solei, Kats character, the area in which the story is set, Mordecai, her mother and fathers mysterious deaths, the mystery of the wolves, everything had a dark creepiness to it and originality (maybe not the werewolf twist but still, everything else). Anyway, the second book disappointed me massively. The whole thing was essentially Kat talking about how she wanted to run away all the time. It made her character more unlikable than realistic and I didn't feel sympathy for her. I felt that the second book should have developed the characters and their relationships more, leading off from the first book. I felt no real elation when Trick and Kat finally end up together in this final installment and I felt no real pangs of sorrow when Justin was killed by his brother. That was mainly because Trick and Justin would randomly show up for brief moments, they would have a short conversation with Kat which would instantly start some kind of sexual tension, and then they would strop off having had some kind of silent or random argument. Apart from the snow ball fight with Trick and their short venture into the wolf center and the training between her and Justin, there was no real development between the characters AT ALL. If Justin was the one who bit Kat, there needed to be something about him. A strange guilt in his eyes, an odd connection between them, something. But no, just randomly at the end, it was him. He didn't act suspiciously when she first meets Lee, he doesn't get defensive whenever she brings up she was bit, nothing. It didn't take me off guard and I didn't suck in a breath and shout "NO WAY!" It just...didn't make sense and felt a bit anti climactic. The only real thing you knew about Justin was he lived with his uncle, his brother had down syndrome, and he was engaged to Lucy. I guess in some conversations concerning his uncle and after she becomes alpha you get some sense of his wolf reactions but...I just felt nothing. As soon as you felt like something, anything was about to happen in this series, some kind of deeper look into a character or a relationship development...she ran back to her car or the cabin or whatever. In the second book, Cordelia constantly just randomly rings up and says "look for the mine" which Kat seemingly makes no real effort to do. I constantly felt like Cordelia was some kind of evil character and she was going to back stab Kat, mainly because there was so little development of her character and relationship to Kat I wasnt sure how I was supposed to feel about her. Yes in the first book they become friends and she helps Kat etc and even protects her, but that is probably why the first book will remain my favourite out of the trilogy. It is the only one that has depth. Why was her evil wolfy uncle even in the series? He lures her all the way to the center with literally...a trail (I couldn't help but think of family guy: "oohhh a piece of candy...oohhh a piece of candy....oohh a piece of candy." I mean SERIOUSLY? She follows the random trail of silver, and there is a pile of all the stuff AND the painting which her uncle has seemingly just left there for months, and then he says some random stuff about her grandfather which she already knew, and just when you think DEPTH...FINALLY SOME DEPTH...she runs back to her car ¬___¬ and thats IT!!!! Like...what was the point!?!?!?!? He killed some girls and bla bla. It added nothing. How did her mother know her father was a werewolf and was bitten by one? Why was her grandfather the Hellhound? Did her grandmother know? Does being the Hellhound torture him? Does he love it, hate it? Whats it like? How did it effect his life? Why did he even have kids? Has he always been the Hellhound or were his ancestors the Hellhound before him? Oh and what explained the whole father being a werewolf thing? A random short story at the end about her grandfather wiping out some guys and the survivors taking revenge. Well...why? Wouldnt they be terrified of the Hellhounds wrath? Why did they bother? Why not kill him? Who actually were they? What happened to the police detective?
Conclusion: Everything was left to be revealed or developed at the very last second when it was too late to really make them add anything to the story. I feel like maybe she should have found the mine and found out who her grandfather was in the second book or something. It would have made the story develop more consistently and made the story more interesting. I feel like this book did a better job than the second, but it still felt rushed, sporadic, like it lacked flow. Normally when you read a book series everything progressively comes together, which normally raises a few more questions. Suspicions are raised, the puzzle slowly forms, you grow affection towards the characters. I didn't get that from these books unfortunately. When she went to the cirque de solei finally with her pap and Trick I thought "right, now their relationship will grow and something will develop between the main and these two very mysterious other characters." She gets there, she watches the show and freaks out, they leave. Nothing. And that very disappointing side story pretty much sums up the whole series. I did enjoy reading these stories because there was some real originality in them, but ultimately I was left craving for more substance.