Great Werewolves are hard to find. While in search of a good werewolf tale, recently, a friend persuaded me to pick up the work of this intriguing author. It had been years since I had given the Romance genre a try, and even back then, I wasn't too keen on it. So it was with some trepidation that I delved into this tale; but in the end, I found it a worthwhile research project! Read on, dear patron, and enjoy.


A Review of
Touch of the Wolf
by Susan Krinard

In a nutshell, Touch of the Wolf concerns a unique young woman, Cassidy Holt, a young woman growing up in California, and later, New Mexico in the 1800s. As she finds herself, at the outset, and an orphan, unwanted adoptee, neglected, alone, she decides to go in search of her roots, in search of those of her own kind, loup-garou: werewolves; in search of someone who knows all the skills and details she feels pulling her soul this way and that, but has no way to utilize. She needs a teacher, as well as family. Her search ends in London, where she sneaks away from her chaperone, hoping to run across one of her kin, anyone from the Forster family. She stumbles on them almost immediately: Braden, Rowena and Quentin Forster, and Cassidy is taken in, as much out of their curiosity over their newfound cousin, as from Braden's devotion to the Cause.

The Cause is the only thing that stands between the loup-garou and extinction, and Braden has been sworn to it, since childhood; now a man, a widower, and Lord of Greyburn Manor, he is nearly as obsessed with the Cause as was his strict and harsh grandfather before him.

Despite all his scheming, however, Braden can't seem to keep his mind on the subject at hand: marrying Cassidy to his brother, Quentin, or keeping his sister Rowena in line. Further complicating matters, it seems Braden has fallen as hard for Cassidy as she has for him. He rejects her, but she continues to keep her options open, as such. Braden tries to convince her Quentin is her soul mate, while meanwhile teaching her all she needs to know of the loup-garou, providing her with all the training she has heretofore been denied; if that weren't enough, he's got a pesky little meeting with all the other surviving European loup-garou families to survive, and keep Cassidy out of the hands of several Russian representatives, while he's at it.

What else will Braden do? What will Cassidy do to push her claim on Braden's heart? To keep from being denied? Will the whole Cause explode in Braden's face? And what happened to his first wife??

You will have to read to find out.

I was thoroughly drawn into the story, despite some of the more obvious trappings of the Romantic side of the novel. Braden, Quentin, Rowena, Cassidy, and her chaperone Isabella, and the quaint, eccentric, and mysterious Matthias were an intriguing bunch of characters and made Touch of the Wolf an enchanting read, and reintroduction to the Romance genre, and I look forward to reading more of Ms. Krinard's work. Give Touch of the Wolf a try. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised!

~Webmistress