‘The Better To Hold You’ by Alisa Sheckley

The Bet­ter To Hold You (2009) by Alisa Kwit­ney writ­ing as Alisa Sheck­ley is the author of two of my favorite con­tem­po­rary romances The Dom­i­nant Blonde and Flirt­ing in Cars. She is writ­ing a new series fea­tur­ing werewolves.

What makes Kwitney’s sto­ries stand out for me is her char­ac­ters — they always feel real to me and this story is no dif­fer­ent. I started this book early Sat­ur­day morn­ing and couldn’t put it down for the first eight chap­ters. I had to put it down to do some errands but once I was back home, I went straight back to my book. I guess I was very sur­prised at the level of sen­su­al­ity in here because it turned out to be a pretty hot read.

The story fol­lows 29 year old Abra Bar­row, a vet­eri­nary intern, work­ing in Man­hat­tan, whose mar­riage to her jour­nal­ist hus­band, Hunter, begins to slowly unravel. Her hus­band has just got­ten back from a three month trip to Roma­nia, research­ing were­wolves with a Euro­pean sci­en­tist who is an expert in the field of lyn­can­thropy.

Hunter’s behav­ior since his trip back strikes Abra as odd. Their once stale love life is sud­denly reju­ve­nated. He seems to enjoy lit­tle games of dom­i­nance while she enjoys this brief and very pas­sion­ate “sec­ond hon­ey­moon.” While Hunter is insa­tiable, he is also cagey, rude, reserved, irri­ta­ble and com­pletely and totally focused on his work. At times he is charm­ing and other times, down­right mean. Abra begins to fret about her mar­riage and makes a major deci­sion to save it.

Abra decides to move with Hunter into his family’s ances­tral home in North­side. It’s a small town out­side the city that pur­ported to have some ampli­fy­ing effect on Hunter’s con­di­tion. Turns out he is infected with the lyn­can­thropy virus. The changes in her hus­band really begin to man­i­fest, where strange things begin to appear like the car­casses of dead rab­bits or squir­rels show­ing up around the house and her husband’s out­wardly aggres­sive man­ner. In a twist of fate, she meets up with the stranger she met at the sub­way a few months back, Red Mallin, an ani­mal removal oper­a­tor. He seems to know what is ail­ing her hus­band and offers his help. The mys­tery of North­side and it’s wacky res­i­dents are slowly unveiled and all I can say is that this is not your typ­i­cal were­wolf story.

I sym­pa­thized with Abra and her mar­i­tal trou­ble. Their stormy mar­riage made up for 60% of the book and for me it was what kept me read­ing. I was gripped. Hunter was a com­plete jerk but I secretly loved it. I didn’t like how he some­times treated Abra (like a dor­mant) but Hunter was being a typ­i­cal Alpha Male. Red, on the other hand was I don’t know, dom­i­nant as well but he was a lot nicer and often played coun­ter­point to Hunter’s aggres­sive nature. It was a tug of war at times and again, I loved it.

The para­nor­mal aspects of the story are some­what down­played. It was apart of the story but not the focus. The story is clearly about Abra and about her rein­vent­ing her­self and try­ing to find her path. She’s the daugh­ter of a for­mer B movie star eccen­tric and a movie direc­tor who divorced when she was a child. Her par­ents’ dis­like of her hus­band has Abra fear­ing that what they’ve said about him over the years is com­ing true. So she suf­fers more than a few weak moments of self-doubt and con­fi­dence. As the story pro­gresses though, she gains her foot­ing and her strength. I’d say toward the end of the book, she’s changed for the better.

Now for the likes and dis­likes. I’d say that Abra’s mar­i­tal trou­ble was overly long before the story arc shifted to some­thing else. The pac­ing went up and down as did the inten­sity. The author’s strength’s lie in her abil­ity to cre­ate a cred­i­ble premise (no mat­ter how improb­a­ble) peo­pled with char­ac­ters that I believed in with­out suf­fer­ing from a “get real” moment. I liked how sci­ence played a role in explain­ing why some peo­ple with the “lyn­can­thropy virus” can shift while oth­ers can­not. You have to be pre­con­di­tioned to accept “the change” and that some­times “magic” can amplify the effects to move things along. It’s an inter­est­ing spin on the usual were­wolf mythology.

In the end, though, this story seems to be more of a metaphor of Abra’s change. At the start of the story, Abra suf­fers qui­etly while her hus­band runs wild on her but toward the end of the story, she gets some spunk, gains her foot­ing and starts let­ting her own Alpha per­son­al­ity burst forth. Every­body gets their just desserts in the end. There’s a romance of sorts in here as well as some moments of lev­ity. There’s also the mad sci­en­tist, Malachy, who shows more than a pass­ing inter­est in her husband’s work with were­wolves. The Bet­ter to Hold You is a decent story, my grade B because while cer­tain sec­tions I read through quickly, there were other sec­tions that made me slow down to a crawl (almost). Hence the review some 4 days later. Not bad though. This is a solid B read for me because I did enjoy all of the char­ac­ters and the twist to the usual were­wolf story. Look­ing for­ward to the sequel.

****

Trivia ques­tion for the win: For the first reader who responds with the right answer: tell me where Abra’s hus­band went to do his research on were­wolves in The Bet­ter To Hold You and you will be the proud owner of this paper­back copy. Never read. I bought the ebook. Leave your response below.