Review: Compelled by Shawntelle Madison

7:08 am 23 June 2014

Compelled
Series: Coveted #3
Author: Shawntelle Madison
Publisher: Indie
Published on: May 5, 2014
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Werewolves
Format: 278 pages, eARC
Provided by: NetGalley
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Natalya Stravinsky is about to face her greatest challenge yet…

For the past five years, Natalya Stravinsky has dreamed of two things: to rejoin the South Toms River werewolf pack and to be reunited with Thorn Grantham. Fate may have brought the pack back into her life, but unless she journeys to Russia to save Thorn, the love she’s found may be lost again. For a stubborn werewolf like Natalya, no distance is too far, no magic spell too complex to master, because one way or another she will find a way to have everything she has ever wanted.

I came into this novel anticipating that it would be a 5-star read; after a rocky start in book 1, this series really hit its stride with KEPT, and I expected more of the same from COMPELLED with the addition of a satisfying conclusion to Natalya Stravinsky’s journey. This finale definitely delivered on the action front with an all-out wizard vs. warlock war, and a race against time to save Thorn’s life. However, as far as trilogy endings go, it fell short of its mark. The secondary characters that I have grown to know and love were all but absent, the romance was minimal, and “alpha” Natalya just wasn’t very believable.

The opening chapters of this book were the most enjoyable in my opinion, because they were on trend with what I’ve come to expect from this series. Aggie and Nat are no longer sharing a house, and yet the heroine’s BFF continues to uphold her ex-roommate’s OCD tendencies by ensuring that the place is spotless. Tyler’s dwarf dinner date was hilarious; I loved how foreign their mate requirements were. “You must have a house underground, you are too tall, etc.” However, I wish there’d been a bit more recap on account of the last installment having been released eighteen months ago. I found myself having to re-read my review of KEPT to help fill-in the blanks.

For some unknown reason, the author decided to cast all of her beloved secondary characters aside in COMPELLED. Thorn, Aggie, and Nick have all played pivotal roles throughout this trilogy only to get the boot at the final hour. Stravinsky’s family and the South Toms River werewolf pack were also barely a blip on the radar, and although I liked the new personalities that Madison introduced in this installment, I wasn’t able to learn enough about them to really care about their fate. The explanation for Nick’s absence was tenuous at best, and Aggie’s disappearing act at the end of the story was obviously a set-up for her upcoming novella, but it kind of felt like the author was putting the cart before the horse in that she’s already planning her next book instead of finishing off this one properly.

The plot itself was a little too epic for my tastes, or maybe it was just the rushed way in which it was delivered. The focus shifts entirely away from the werewolves, and instead we see an influx of other supes like cyclops’, water demons, darklings, warlocks, etc. I found it all rather overwhelming to be honest, and the pathway to the ending was also entirely too convenient. Nat’s first attempt at travelling magically lands her on an island where four werewolf acolytes have been trapped for 400 hundred years, but they just so happen to be the key to winning the war. Then, they help her free some wizards that have been trapped for seven centuries, who in turn… well, you get the idea. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Natalya’s come a long way since COVETED, but the leap her character takes from KEPT to this latest installment was a bit of a stretch. I wish the author had further explored her struggles with her new alpha status and her OCD because it felt like she conquered both practically overnight. All this to say that aside from the bucket load of action, COMPELLED was a disappointing conclusion to Shawntelle Madison’s werewolf series.