#4 Beginnings (eBook) by Kelley Armstrong

My Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Before starting Haunted, Kelley’s latest novel in her Women of the Otherworld series, I wanted to get caught up on her 2004 online novella which I hadn’t yet read. Beginnings fills the gap between the Savage and Ascension e-serials, and her first published novel Bitten.

It’s the story of how Elena met Clay, before he bit her and made her the first and only female werewolf. Elena Michaels is a student at the University of Toronto, working her way through college, when Clayton Danvers joins the college as a visiting professor, teaching an anthropology class. Clay takes an interest in Elena and offers her a job as his TA (Teachers Assistant) as he attempts to break down her walls and get to know her better. In Elena, Clay sees some of the same traits he himself possesses, her unwillingness to allow people to get to close to her for instance. Their slow friendship eventually turns to love, despite cautions Clay has received his entire life from the rest of his Pack against forming close relationships and risking the exposure of their race. But Clay knows he cannot live without Elena and decides to bring her home to Stonehaven for a surprise visit to “meet the family”. While Jeremy, Clay’s stepfather and Pack Leader, is doing his best to try to scare Elena off a relationship with Clay, Clay realizes the only way he’s going to get Jeremy to accept Elena is to make her one of their own. So while in wolf form, he approaches Elena, who simply thinks he’s Jeremy’s big, beautiful dog, and does the job. The actual transformation from human to werewolf is extremely long and painful, something that few humans survive, and Elena’s trials and tribulations in this are documented in memory flashbacks in Bitten, Kelley’s first published novel.

Though this isn’t a required read to enjoy the series, since any of the main points occurring in this eBook are eluded to in other places, it was entertaining nonetheless, and gives the reader a bit more background into Elena and Clay’s relationship. See more progress on read 100 books in 2006.