Full Blooded (Jessica McClain, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Jul 14, 2012 Carrie rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley, paranormal-romance, tower-team, werewolves, kickass-spirited-strong, urban-fantasy, 1st-in-a-series, shifters

*Warning the following review may contain spoilers, proceed with caution. You have been warned.*

Jessica is the only female werewolf because females weren't meant to change, she shouldn't exist, she was a mistake. When she was born the pack wanted her father, the Alpha, to kill her because they were scared of an ancient myth,

"As a female in Wolf Skin rises, the unborn Daughter of Cain is born; In her the beast shall lie, well hidden in True Form; And from this day forth, the Wolves of the Ni ...more

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May 13, 2013 D.G. rated it liked it

Shelves: urban-fantasy, reviewed

**2 stars for the beginning (biggest info dumps EVER!) and 3.5 for the end**

Full Blooded had an interesting premise but the author needs to do some serious work on her world building, characterization and plot development. The ending was good - thus the 3 star rating - but the first half had the most horrid info dumps I've ever read. EVERY CHARACTER talked in long paragraphs of 3+ sentences - in chapter 2, I counted 12 examples of such paragraphs. Don't know what I mean? Here's one an example:

" **2 stars for the beginning (biggest info dumps EVER!) and 3.5 for the end**

Full Blooded had an interesting premise but the author needs to do some serious work on her world building, characterization and plot development. The ending was good - thus the 3 star rating - but the first half had the most horrid info dumps I've ever read. EVERY CHARACTER talked in long paragraphs of 3+ sentences - in chapter 2, I counted 12 examples of such paragraphs. Don't know what I mean? Here's one an example:

"Listen, Ray. I realize you think I had something to do with this whole mess.” I jabbed my elbow into door, gesturing to my apartment. “And you think I’m hiding a big, juicy secret from the world. Possibly hidden somewhere inside there. In fact, you’ve been dogging me for a very long time trying to find out just exactly what it is, making my life hard and miserable along the way, but here’s the truth—are you ready? I’m not hiding anything.” Well, other than the fact I just turned into a scary werewolf. “I’m not on drugs, I don’t deal them. I don’t have ties to the Colombians, and more importantly, I haven’t broken any laws. The truth is, my boyfriend and I decided to go camping at the last minute simply because the weather was beautiful.” Thank goodness it wasn’t tornado season. “It was just one of those happy, carefree decisions people make. He took care of bringing the keys, and I forgot to get them back. And while we were gone, someone trashed my place. That’s the end of the juicy story.”

I kept imagining Jessica as Joe Friday in one of this infamous speeches.

Everybody talked in the same way: Jessica, her brother, the neighbor, the Pack's second and even her father. There was no distinction accounting for personality or temperament as if everybody goes around the world speaking in speeches.

Besides the crazy info dumps, there wasn't a clear explanation of the premise. Why aren't there any female werewolves? The author didn't delve very deeply into this - it just doesn't seem evolutionary efficient for a race to rely in other females for reproduction. There was some mention of the "shifter gene being coded into the second x chromosome" but then, how is Jessica a werewolf? My husband's explanation: she's a hermaphrodite.

One of the worst issues with the characterization is that we have very little knowledge as to what Jessica is feeling. She's confronted with a lot of new situations but with a few exceptions, we almost never get to know her feelings. Is she scared? Happy? Sad? Envious? Grumpy? We know when her wolf is lusty (which happens quite often) or when she wants to fight but that's pretty much it. What is the point of writing a book in the first person if the reader has to guess the character's feelings?

It was difficult for me to take Jessica seriously when she was so boastful during fights. At one point, a dangerous character is disabled and instead of finishing her off, she decides to have a drawn out fight with an enemy she could have dispatched quickly while having boastful speeches of the 'You're going to die!!' variety. At the same time, the dangerous character took the opportunity to recuperate and wreak further havoc down the road. WHERE'S YOUR BRAIN, WOMAN?

Full Blooded have some really good male characters - Rourke, Callum and James were particularly yummy - and they only reason I'm reading book #2. I really hope the author has curbed her tendency towards info dumping in future books because otherwise, I don't think I'll be able to read further. ...more

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Dec 09, 2013 Thenia rated it liked it

Shelves: series, paranormal, shifters, mystery, r-ab, reviewed, vampires, 2013

It started out very promising but somehow missed the mark for me.

I did not particularly like the narrator's interpretations and accents, especially the ones of male characters, and that made some weak points of the story that much more obvious. The story, and particularly the dialogue, was particularly wordy and even a bit repetitive at times and my interest waned a little after the halfway point.

Even so, I'm a bit curious to see what happens next in Jessica's life, especially after the abrupt e ...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Samantha rated it liked it

Shelves: meh, 2012, uf, werewolves

An interesting debut, but not without a few issues. The typical UF scenery is here and that's just fine because I like reading about kick-ass heroines and werewolves. However Jessica, our unique female werewolf (the only known of her kind) is as annoying as she is interesting. She and her wolf are separate and she has an annoying habit of talking to her wolf like a disobedient child. It was distracting and didn't endear me to her as a character.

The world building here states that werewolves are ...more

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May 30, 2012 Jesslyn rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle-sample, cat-urban-fantasy, cat-series-ongoing, cat-series-cliffhanger-ending, z2013-kindle-reads

I usually end up grabbing a PNR when I can't find any epic fantasy that I want to read and this one was good. I like the world-building and will most likely get the next one. My knock on it was the for the overly-used and much hated cliffhanger ending. ...more

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