39. "Frostbitten" by Kelley Armstrong

Okay, confession: Kelley Armstrong's books are among my favorite guilty pleasures. I mock the whole chick-lit/ paranormal romance subgenre, and my half-hearted attempts to read other books of this type have usually lasted about 15 pages. But for some reason, I really like Armstrong's work.

I decided to purchase Frostbitten, the tenth book in her "Women of the Otherworld" series, as the first title for my new Kindle, a Christmas present from my parents.* Like most series, this one peaked several novels ago, but Frostbitten introduces a variety of new, mostly male, characters and delves into a dark part of a familiar character's past. The novel is narrated by Elena Michaels, the only known female werewolf (backstory found in Bitten) and future Alpha of the North American werewolf pack. She and her mate, Clay, travel to Alaska to pursue a fleeing young werewolf and investigate some odd happenings. Their encounter with a lawless pack awakens memories of Elena's abuse at the hands of a foster father.

Like Armstrong's other novels, there's sex, but it feels almost perfunctory at this point in the series. The more I read, the more I think it's extremely difficult to write a good sex scene, or to write about sex in non-cliched, innovative ways. Armstrong isn't overly graphic, but there's definitely a "this will appeal to frustrated housewives" sensibility--at least that's my take.

Regardless, the plot's interesting and lively and kept me turning pages--well, scrolling through screens, technically, I guess.

*I had not planned on ever getting a Kindle. One day in December, my mother, who was doing some Christmas shopping online, said to me, "Have you ever thought about getting a Kindle?" No, I said. "Well, think about it," she said. "Someday you're going to have back problems from lugging all those boxes of books around every time you move. And when you travel, you could just take the Kindle instead of bags full of heavy books." The latter argument especially convinced me, because I'm constitutionally incapable of traveling without at least 10 more books than I can reasonably expect to read. And this gets, you know, cumbersome and weighty.

Verdict? Like other bibliophiles I know, I'm pleasantly surprised by the Kindle. It works very well, it's light and portable, and it doesn't feel like you're looking at a screen.