Review - Stolen by Kelley Armstrong

This is month two of the reading challenge hosted by Moonlight Gleam. March was Bitten and April is Stolen, May will be Dime Store Magic and so forth til all 13 books in the series have been read and reviewed! The link for joining up is in the sidebar.

Blurb from Kelley's site

http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/stolen/

Stolen

When a young witch tells Elena that a group of humans are kidnapping supernaturals, Elena ignores the warning. After all, everyone knows there’s no such thing as witches. As for the thought of other ‘supernaturals’, well, she’d just rather not dwell on the possibility. Soon, however, she’s confronted with the truth about her world, when she’s kidnapped and thrown into a cell-block with witches, sorcerers, half-demons and other werewolves. As Elena soon discovers, dealing with her fellow captives is the least of her worries. In this prison, the real monsters carry the keys.

My Review

I love this book as it's pivotal in expanding Kelley's Otherworld. Elena narrates again and I love all the little nuances and themes in it, how everything serves to build her character and history. For example when she gives her reasons for not usually telling Clay she misses him or never saying she loves him outside of the bedroom cause she see's it as giving him too much power to hurt her like others have done. she knows it's stupid and says so herself but it's something she still has to overcome. Also the way Ty Winsloe's treatment of her scares her not because of the power he holds in the story or because of him but because of how it reminds her about her bad childhood experiences in the foster homes she was in. All these things build her to a truly substantial character.
One of my favourite parts in this story (apart from her reunion with Clay and her revenge on Ty) is when she's just sat with Jeremy and he's telling her antedotes of Clay's childhood, through her we learn a little more about Clay and Jeremy's past's and childhood's. We also see the introduction of new supernatural races in this, the witches, half-demons, shaman's, vampires and sorcerers. I will admit that in this book I wasn't fond of Paige when I first met her but towards the end she was really growing on me, espeacially when she threatened to cut off and box a certain part of Adam's anatomy! She's a character that in future books becomes a favourite of mine alongside Elena. I also love Adam's character, he's so boyish but (being a half-demon) has a dangerous edge. Cassandra has never grown on me like the rest of the characters but the male vampire we meet briefly at the end does.
Again, parts of the book made me sad as characters I liked were killed but alot of it made me laugh, like Xavier's antics, he was definetly a fence character, neither truly on one side or the other.
This book had a few twists in it that when I first read it I didn't really see coming but it kept me hooked from start to finish with everything going on in it and the new characters being brought in to the series. Elena only had me mentally berating her a couple of times when her insecurities came into play making her think things that weren't true and overreact to a couple of things. She has come along since Bitten in that she has 100% accepted that she belongs with Clay and the pack, she hasn't given up her independant streak but nor is she running away anymore. She's accepted her life even if she hasn't yet forgiven Clay but she still has a lot more ground to cover. She still has to overcome alot of her insecurities and learn to be open with Clay. Learn to NOT be afraid to tell him outright that she misses him when they're separated and that she loves him, afterall Clay has more then proved he's never going to abandon her or leave her for any reason. She has to learn to believe and trust in that. I also love the fact that at the end Clay has now got the idea of kids in his head much to Elena's horror! Lol, I laughed when she made the comment about hiding her birth control pills from now on! This book is an amazing sequel to Bitten and well worth picking up!       

Review - Bitten by Kelley Armstrong

I've decided to add my reviews for Kelley's Series that I've already done on Goodreads for Moonlight Gleam's challenge on here so here's my review for the first book in Kelley Armstrong's amazing Otherworld series - Bitten

Blurb from Kelley's website

http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/bitten/

Elena Michaels is the world’s only female werewolf. And she’s tired of it. Tired of a life spent hiding and protecting, a life where her most important job is hunting down rogue werewolves. Tired of a world that not only accepts the worst in her–her temper, her violence–but requires it. Worst of all, she realizes she’s growing content with that life, with being that person.

So she left the Pack and returned to Toronto where she’s trying to live as a human. When the Pack leader calls asking for her help fighting a sudden uprising, she only agrees because she owes him. Once this is over, she’ll be squared with the Pack and free to live life as a human. Which is what she wants. Really.

My Review

Just re-read this book for the umpeenth time! I love and adore this series and Clay and Elena are one of my very favourite couples in the series. Throughout the book anyone knew to the series would be forgiven for thinking the worst of Clayton. Why? Simple, the narration is purely from Elena's point of view and throughout the book we're getting her thoughts on everyone, but at the same time we're also seeing what happens and what's said so reading between the lines you learn that what Elena thinks is not the actual truth. She wants Clay to be the bad guy so she can blame all her own flaws on him and the bite rather then live up the truth that the flaws are her own and were very much there before the bite. She wants to believe that Jeremy can't really care about her for her cause she can't believe that anyone as good as Jeremy could care about someone as damaged as her (quick note, that's care about her in a platonic way not romantic! Jeremy is very much a father figure to Elena!).

She's running from pack life not because it's bad persay but because of her own stubborness. She didn't choose to be bitten and turned therefore she'll fight that life for no other reason then she didn't choose it, despite the fact that regardless what she tries to force herself to think and belive, the life makes her happy.She loves Clay and he's the only man for her but she continues to delude her self otherwise til the very end when she rescues him and finally realises she's not getting him back for the pack but for herself.

I love Kelley's writing style throughout, how she develops the characters and draws you in to the story. There is a lot of humour in Kelley's writing to temper the serious side of the story! The banter between the characters and the lines they use make you laugh, like Nick's line to Elena when they find the shreds of hers and Clayton's clothes in the forest 'Wild dogs? or just Clayton?'. I was always a Clay fan, even when it was the first time I read it, cause I could see the differences between what she thought and said and what we seen him say and do. I could also see how she was only truly herself around him and the pack and they never judged her for it or left her. They accepted her for who she was. That was never the case with Philip. She was hiding a big part of herself and I'm not referring to her being a werwolf. She was modifying her behaviour, her temper, her likes and preferences, everything for Philip, she was presenting a false persona to him that had her subpressing a lot of herself. She wouldn't even make a sarcastic comment around Philip cause he wouldn't approve.

I was happiest when she realised that she could have her dreams with the pack and didn't need to deny herself. She didn't need to pretend to be someone she wasn't to have those dreams. She did however go through hell and back to realise it and I wonder if those mutts hadn't chosen to revolt and attack the pack, how long would it have took her to realise the truth and how deep in the lie would she have been before she realised it could never work and she could never truly be happy lying to herself and everyone around her?

My first post and I've created the blog just to take part in Moonlight Gleam's Women of the Otherworld's mini-challenge which is being run for participants of  her Women of the Otherworld Series challenge. Participants are challenged to read one of the books from Kelley's series each month. Here's the link to join :-

http://www.moonlightgleam.com/2012/02/women-of-otherworld-reading-challenge.html

The mini-challenge is to take pictures of YOUR Kelley Armstrong books, all her series and the anthology's which she appears in, even a screen shot of the e-books if you want, that you own. So I took my camera this morning and pulled out all my Kelley Armstrong books and anthologies and got snapping! Bear with me on this, having never blogged before I'm just hoping I manage to post the pictures without messing up!

These are my speacial Kelley Armstrong books, the limited editions by SubPress and the infamous Otherworld Primer from Dabel. You'll notice I have two copies of some, that's because I saved to get the Trade and the limited for the subpress books so that I had both covers and so I could keep the signed, numbered edition up safe.

These are the main series books and the two short story collections that Kelley did, rounding up a few of the short stories she had written for the series, including prequel stories for characters, and which she donated the proceeds of to a literary charity.

These are all the anthologies I own that Kelley has contributed to, some have standalone stories that are separate from the series, some are based in the otherworld but aren't related to any characters in the series and others are based within the series timeline and involve side stories with the characters.

These are the YA anthologies, Enthralled has a Chloe story in it and the other two anthologies contain short stories on a character we haven't seen in the YA series Kat, another genesis subject.

These are from the YA series, two separate trilogies that are connected , the next book comes out next April and will see the two sets of characters meeting up which I'm looking forward to, the two trilogies are set in the same world (a spin-off from the adult series) and with the same enemies to a point but two different projects - Genisis and Phoenix.

These are her non-supernatural series, The Nadia Stafford series. There is to be a final third book which I've been waiting for since I first read the series but it's been on the back burner for a long time. Finally though Kelley is writing the third Nadia book, it will probably be a while before we see it but I'm looking forward to it.

 These are some of what I have on my Kindle, I've been working on getting all Kelley's book's on Kindle so that I can carry them all with me when I travel.

So that's all my Kelley Armstrong titles that I have, never realised just how many I had before this mini-challenge! As Kelley is a favourite author of mine I have gone above and beyond to get all her work, including the anthologies and I treat myself to the yearly subpress Novella that get's realised cause they are such beautiful books!