Nightshade (Book 1)by Andrea Cremer

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? (goodreads.com)

Why yes! It does appear that I am focusing on reading books I got at BEA last year while BEA is going on this year. To be honest, it sort of reminded me I still had a bunch of books I hadn't read from that trip. I stood in line to get this novel signed, it wasn't a planned one but I think it was one of those "I came out of one signing and saw there was no line at another signing I didn't think I'd make" deals. I don't think I knew really that Nightshade was going to be about werewolves of a sort, I think I might have thought witchy and I loved the cover. So I will admit that once I realized it was about wolves and started seeing the not so stellar reviews around I sort of put it off.I wish I hadn't, because aside from the love triangle-slash-instant love bits, I was fascinated by the paranormal world that Andrea Cremer had created. I loved the idea of a town ruled by the wolves, but the wolves are ruled by Keepers (magical beings of some sort?) and so on. It made for an interesting dynamic in the story. Sort of like The Craft meets um, werewolves. ;PThings I liked - the Guardian/Keeper aspect. Very cool. I liked Calla for the most part. I liked Ren and I loved Calla's brother and best friend. The group dynamics were pretty well done. Two "rival" packs having to form one. One pack is slightly more hooliganish than the other. I don't know why I like large casts in my stories, but I do. Take L.J. Smith's Secret Circle trilogy for instance (and you all know how much I LOVE that series, if you're a regular reader of my blog). I loved that there were 12 teens in that group. Not all had large parts, but they were there. Each was different. Not all of the teens in Nightshade were as 3-dimensional though. Ren's sister, um, Cossette? Wasn't all that memorable. In fact I had to think hard about what the heck her name was. But still, I loved the larger cast of characters. I liked their mystery, even if all but Calla knew what it was.What I didn't like - Shay. I just didn't like him. It didn't help that I thought those youtube videos of "Shay" exploring the house (as part of the marketing campaign) were lame. I hated the actor playing Shay with a passion. There was no acting ability there. I get what they were trying to do but it so didn't work for me. Shay in the book didn't work for me either. So he had no fear of Calla and the Guardians like he should, but he still shouldn't have been such an ass about things. I think Shay was an asshat for the most part of the book and I was sort of hoping he'd die, but alas, things went exactly as I guessed they would with him. Can we please have more books without the stupid instant-love crap that is being published all the time? PLEASE? Ugh. I am old and jaded and just have no patience for that sort of thing. It makes me skim pages whilst rolling my eyes and trying to get back to the PLOT faster.I did keep reading the book with the lurking doom feeling of "ok, so maybe I'll start not liking the story now"  but with each page I turned I found I was enjoying the book so much more than I thought I was. I let myself be swayed too long by the negative reviews I was seeing so I had started Nightshade with very low expectations, which I shouldn't have.The best thing about finishing this book? When I was about 50 pages from the end, I received an email from Penguin Canada asking me if I'd be interested in reviewing the sequel. Talk about great timing! Penguin Canada might be spying on me but I certainly appreciated it this time. Of course I said yes! So I'll have Wolfsbane to read this coming week. Woot!Nightshade series

1. Nightshade
2. Wolfsbane
3. Bloodrose - February 2012