Cath's Book Nook

[cathepsut]

Stolen (#2 of Women of the Otherworld) by Kelley Armstong

From Amazon:
"When two desperate witches lure part-time journalist and full-time werewolf Elena Michaels into a carefully laid trap, she quickly learns that her perceptions about humanity are based on some fundamental flaws. In Kelley Armstrong's supernatural thriller, Stolen, the world is populated with vampires, demons, half-demons, magical shamans and other supernatural races living anonymously among the human population--a concept that Elena has a hard time accepting, just as she struggled with her own lupine identity in Armstrong's remarkable debut, Bitten."

I read Bitten two years ago and have had Stolen on my shelf ever since. I liked bitten, but obviously not enough to immediately read the next one. It's been too long to remember, why I wasn't totally convinced by the story. Something was there in the back of my mind. I did not like Clay and the relationship between him and Elena left me with a lukewarm feeling at best.

When I started Stolen, I was therefore pleasantly surprised, how much I did like it. However, I disliked Paige a lot. Ok, that was probably the point. I don't think the character was supposed to be all that likeable at first. But it put me off a bit. What I also did not like so much was the use of magic towards the end of the book. It's a supernatural novel, so there is bound to be some magical elements. They just did not feel real, if that makes sense. It felt like an easy way to drive the story ahead.

So, it was not bad, but I am not totally convinced either. To put a further damper on things, the third book of the series is told by Paige and presumably features heavily on her brand of magic. I put Dime Store Magic on my BookMooch and BookCrossing wishlists, maybe I will get it at a later time if I should run out of more interesting stuff to read.