Reviews for Dancing With Werewolves (Delilah Street Series#1)

The average rating for Dancing With Werewolves (Delilah Street Series#1) based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-01-23 00:00:00 Richard Atkinson NO SPOILERS I found this book pretty terrible, but at times (key phrase here, 'at times') in that so-bad-it's-amusing way. Some flaws amused more than others. Tense switching occurred in some scenes where I presume the author was trying to involve the reader in the action - but jarring confusion was the result instead. I wish the author had stuck to past tense, or at least been more consistent in tense switching during action moments. More amusing were the eye-roll-inducing stereotypes and ethnic fetishes. The heroine is 'Black Irish', as the author reminds ad nauseam, even though she was *abandoned as an infant* and knows nothing of her heritage. As part of this, the author belabours her 'lily-white', gorgeously pale skin, her 'baby blues', and she is of course totally gorgeous, very slender but with cleavage, and desired by all despite lacking self-confidence. Mary Sue FAIL! The hero, Ric, is even worse in this regard. He's LATIN and epitomises every cliché ever, and his 'coffee-colored' etc skin gets as much screen time as Delilah's porcelain version. An excerpt of this ridiculousness: "The dowser was looking as dazed and embarassed as I felt, thank God. His rich cocoa-colored skin had an ashy undertone. Tiny beads of sweat swept across his forehead, catching the twilight like a diadem. He looked...dazzling. Like a fairyland lord come to take me away. From the electricity I'd felt between us, I was ready to go anywhere." Borrowing from Twilight, I see. Unfortunately, I can rarely stand to read the word 'dazzling' (or variations) after the damage that series wreaked on the poor word. There are countless other instances of terrible similes; some of them made so little sense or were so random I just scratched my head, others were so vividly unusual I couldn't help but laugh. Whatever faults the author has, she does not lack for creative description! If you can overlook the bizarre and the cliché, the many references to classic cinema were an interesting angle within paranormal romance, and the futuristic fantasy world was interesting, too, if somewhat shoddily and incompletely constructed - in particular the CinSims, who defy known science and whose workings remained unexplained. The plot was decent although incredibly scattered, the dialogue usually bearable, and some of the ideas (Delilah and Ric's powers, other supernatural creatures) were creative and interesting. The author possesses a broad vocabulary and isn't afraid to flaunt it, but abuses her thesaurus. On the whole I found Delilah likeable; other than being a virginal victim (so overdone and so not appealing), she rarely annoyed me. I finished the book, and it was *entertaining*, but I have no desire to ever read more by this author, let alone further in the series.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-11-17 00:00:00 Michal Mac I only got to page 100 before give up - it was like trying to follow someone with a bad case of ADD and the writing abilities of a 5th grader. By page 60, the main characters had a date go terribly wrong, sorry her henceforth undiscovered twin carved up on a CSI show; had her dog die of blood poisoning; effectively lost her job/beat as a reporter; lost her house due to the actions of her co-worker - a weather witch - for no real reason whatsoever; mentioned 45 gazillion times that her Snow White like color makes her vampire bait; and hinted at a super-sikrit mysteriously sppoooky past, which of course she actually knows nothing about. Frankly, I didn't have enough energy to hope that this whole thing would sort itself out at the end, much less continue to decipher if what was going on was action, a random thought, a nightmare, or a vision - something that was not always clear from the writing.