Book Review: Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

Goodreads summary:

Calla Tor has always known her destiny: After graduating from the Mountain School, she'll be the mate of sexy alpha wolf Ren Laroche and fight with him, side by side, ruling their pack and guarding sacred sites for the Keepers. But when she violates her masters' laws by saving a beautiful human boy out for a hike, Calla begins to question her fate, her existence, and the very essence of the world she has known. By following her heart, she might lose everything- including her own life. Is forbidden love worth the ultimate sacrifice?
My review:

I really, really wanted to love this book, but I just didn't care much for it at all.  Honestly, there was nothing particularly exciting or interesting about it that stuck out to me.  And what's with everyone saying it's so original?  I thought it was quite cliche at times.

My main issue is with the characters and the love triangle.  The main character Calla is kind of annoying, she's one of those shallow kick-butt heroines, and her character doesn't have any depth.  Everyone was always going on about how tough and strong Calla was, and she never seemed to do anything that extrordinary!  I also disliked how she kept going back and forth between Ren and Shay and couldn't decide who she liked.

There are quite a few minor characters, and they did get confusing at first.  None of them caught my interest or seemed well-developed, except for Calla's younger brother Ansel and her friend Bryn.  I did like them.  As for Ren and Shay, the two love interests, I neither hated them nor loved them.  Both got on my nerves occasionally, and I really wasn't crazy about either of them.

Which leads me to...you guessed it.  The love triangle.  *sigh* I'm not someone who always hates love triangles.  I can appreciate and enjoy a love triangle if it's well-done.  But I just didn't care for the love triangle in Nightshade.  I can actually see why Ren and Shay liked Calla, which is a plus, because in most books the main character tends to be whiny and self-absorbed and it makes you wonder why the guys are in love with her.  Still...I just didn't like it.  Seemed like Calla just couldn't make up her mind and was hurting both Ren and Shay with her dramatic love life problems.

Also, the problem is that the book is just too focused on the romance.  With Nightshade being 450 pages long, I was expecting some major action and plot twists and cool backstories about the werewolves, but it all fell flat.  I would really have loved to know more about the werewolves and their backgrounds.  Instead, the backstories all seemed thrown together and didn't make much sense.

I wish I could've enjoyed Nightshade more, and I can see why some people love it.  I guess it just wasn't for me.  It's really not a terrible book; I don't think it's painfully boring to read like, say, Lauren Kate's Fallen series, which I couldn't stand.  So I'm going to read the next book, Wolfsbane, and hopefully this series will start improving.

My rating:  5 out of 10 (2.5 stars)

~ The Bookworm