TITLE: Accidentally Wolf (Seraphine Thomas 01)
AUTHOR: Erin R Flynn
GENRE: Urban Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 09/14/2012
RATING: ★★★☆☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Read
Description: Special Agent in Charge, Seraphine Thomas, lives for her job at the FBI. One of the youngest female agents with her own team, she thrives in undercover work to make the city she loves safer. But Sera's on-track life is thrown into chaos when she's attacked during a bust gone bad and is left figuring out what it means to be a werewolf. Right away, she learns that she's more powerful and able to do things that she shouldn't be able to do so quickly after her transition. The rules of her old life don't seem to apply to much now that she's a shifter, and knowing who she can trust is even more complicated. When she's transferred to a special branch of the FBI made up of paranormals policing others of their kind and given a promotion, things start looking up - until her abnormal level of power creates a list of enemies for her before she's even learned who her allies are.
Review: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new contender! I didn't know what to expect from this "new" author and reading this novel was a pleasant surprise. I would have to say the novel starts out at four stars, dips back and forth to two at some points, and ends at at least a three star level, so that's where I get my rating.
Accidentally Wolf lives up to its title. Our heroine is a driven FBI agent who's a bit of a loner in her personal life. She's bitten by a werewolf and then in turn becomes one herself. In the author's world paranormals are "out of the closet" but distrusted. She's unceremoniously dumped out of her old squad and put into an FBI squad populated by other "paranormals." To add insult to injury, this MNSTR squad of the FBI gets little respect. Turns out our gal is just the one to help try and turn this around and set the local community on it's ear in the process.
Seraphine (our heroine) is, as fitting a character deserving her own series of novels, not your average werewolf. To start off with, she's hidden the fact for years that she's a form of clairvoyant. Then, to add to that, she's a much more powerful werewolf than average in this world. *Minor Spoiler* This apparently stems from the fact that she's an uncommon strain of werewolf that's also a type of siren. I'll explain shortly why this is important.
This is where we branch off further from your average urban fantasy novel. Turns out that we've seen a lot of novels from author Erin R Flynn before. They were written under the name Joyee Flynn, a name that our "erotic" novel fans will recognize immediately. Accidentally Wolf is her first venture into more mainstream work, thus the change to her "real" penname. This is important because, after the novel gets off to a great start, it has trouble at times deciding if it wants to stay a mainstream title or change direction towards the author's erotic roots.
The best way I can describe it is to say that it started reminding me of the Anita Blake series. It's world is lighter in tone than Anita's, but I found myself continuing to compare Seraphine to that character of Laurell K Hamilton's at times. Not Anita at her smuttiest worst, nor at her more serious best, but somewhere in between.
There's also the potential issue of our heroine being a little over powered for the world she lives in. The conflict between her and the main villian plays out great, but you find yourself wondering, with some of the more minor villians, why she just doesn't kick their butts and get it over with. She's obviously got the juice to do it without breaking much of a sweat. I guess the drawbacks she inherits with her powers do partially balance them out.
These issues aside, I liked it, especially for an initial outing. I found myself rooting for Seraphine and her team. I'm looking forward to the follow up book, and I'm hoping it gets even better. Let's see if the author can avoid some of the potential issues I spotted in the future.
I would recommend it to any reader that enjoys urban fantasy titles and it should have some appeal to those who read "erotic" titles as well. The only people I would warn away are those who are trying to keep it at a YA level.
Let's hear it for the new kid on the block!
