I have mixed feelings about this book. It was written well, and has some interesting pack dynamics and world-building that I liked. However, I felt Elise had a touch of the "Too Stupid To Live" about her. Marla is a textbook villain bitch, and acts suspiciously throughout the whole book, yet Elise is always too busy to confront her and actually starts following Marla's advice against all reasonable sense.... 
 I mean, I had hope, when she started writing down all the things that didn't quite add up about Marla (at that point I thought Elise was being quite clever), but still the story has to rely on stupid coincidences for Marla's dastardly plan to bump of Elise and drown her in a lake to come into action. Every time Elise tried to approach Kane, and tell him about her innocent meetings with former flame Bryan, "something always came up." By the third time, I was rolling my eyes. 
 Also Marla decided to take the cliche villain thing to a max, and sits there at the climax, revealing her sabotage and evilness, in this longish monologue (interjected with Elise questioning her), instead of just getting on with it and killing Elise. There was some serious potential with Marla's character, only if the author hadn't made it so darn obvious she was up to no good in the background, and in the end, she didn't just sit there, going through her plans one by one, when she KNOWS Elise is blood-bonded, and Kane could be on her arse any minute, so to get a MOVE ON. And then sliding up and pressing a knife against Elise's throat, whilst Kane and his brother, Ryne fought? Really? To have Marla's mask fall that drastically in front of the two brothers, like the author was determined EVERYONE should get to witness her dethroning? It would've fitted her character more, if she still tried to play the boys. To the death, man! 
 To be fair, I first read this book when the author was originally posting it on FP, and I could never get past chapter 10 for some reason...probably because Marla was bugging me then too. I'm happy to say Charles (the author) improves with her plotting, and moves away from the cliches, in the later sequels. 
 This one is a nice frothy read, and it actually had something good for the first half, but the climax was too cliche for me to give it any more than three stars. Still, worth a read though!