I’m rating this 4 rather than 3 stars because I think that, for what faults this book has, as a debut its virtues and its promise are worth the extra star.

I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way first, then. Although the quality of the writing is well above most Kindle erotic romance, at odd occasions the prose still flounders. One thing that most disappointed me was the fact that the opening threw all suspense to the wind and announced straight up that the hero was a werewolf. I mean, yes, we all know what a book called Seduced by the Alpha Wolf is going to be about, but, hey, let us lose ourselves in playing the game for a little, at least! 🙂 As it was, the author showed that she was indeed able to do a good job of properly foreshadowing the hero’s “problem”, as he drops odd conversational hints, and so on.

Other reviewers have criticised the heroine’s “first time” as unrealistic, and, well, yeesss, while the idea that someone so inexperienced is going to jump right in the deep end as she did might seem hard to believe, given the complete and abrupt change of circumstances she finds herself in, and the hypnotic attraction of the hero, it’s not altogether unbelievable, either. Certainly her ensuing … “enthusiasm” makes sense. Many of us might remember that, once the dam was broken, so to speak, diving right on in. Especially with a partner like Adrian Capitoline.

Finally, what many reviewers have found the most controversial aspect of the story – the beast. This is certainly a challenging area that the author has tackled, and one that most shifter novels assiduously avoid. But it’s also what suggests, to me, that here is an author worth keeping an eye on. The Beast fable is an allegory for the darker aspects of sex and desire – “nice guy” Adrian initiates Marie into the world of daytime, vanilla sex, but she soon finds that – whether she can bring herself to admit it or not – she has a fatal attraction to the dark, dangerous, night-time world of the beast.

This is an aspect of the psychology of desire and eroticism that many shifter stories skirt around, but few are willing to go so far – Walerian Borowczyk’s 1975 film La bête notoriously explored the same territory. Seduced by the Alpha Wolf does it very well indeed. The scenes with the beast are some of the hottest in the book. The sense of dark, prowling sexuality, and dangerous domination. The Adrian/Beast dichotomy also allows the author to establish a love triangle which actually only involves two people – an interesting play, which suggests to me that Kaycee Kline is indeed a writer to keep an eye on.

4/5

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