I grabbed Heather Hildenbrand‘s Dirty Blood off of the KDP free list. At the time of posting it was still free…or free again. I downloaded it quite a while ago. 

Description from Goodreads:
I killed a girl last night. I did it with my bare hands and an old piece of pipe I found lying next to the dumpster. But that’s not the part that got me. The part that scared me, the part I can’t seem to wrap my head around and still has me reeling, was that when she charged me, her body shifted – and then she was a wolf. All snapping teeth and and extended claws. But by the time I stood over her lifeless body, she was a girl again. That’s about the time I went into shock… And that was the moment he showed up.

Review:
I put off reading this book because, frankly, I haven’t been enjoying many YA read lately. I’m beginning to think I’ve just gotten a little too old to relate to the teenagers involved. That being the case, I was relieved to enjoy this one as much as I did. Yes, I still had to sit through Algebra class (or whatever period it might have been) and all of the adolescent angst, but I have no intention of penalising the book for an expected element of the genre. It’s just that some books play this particular card too heavily for me. That wasn’t the case here. There was enough to remind me that Tara was 17 and Wes 19, but not enough to drown out the rest of the plot.

Tara was a character I could understand. She was strong willed, without being suicidal about it. She very rarely put herself in needless danger just to prove her independence. Plus she was surprisingly observant of the body language of other characters. She gleaned a lot of information from very small things. I appreciated that. Like her, I got a little tired of everyone trying to push her aside for her own protection and I was right behind her when she lashed out about it. You go girl!

I thought that the plot rolled along nicely. There were a few predictable parts, but on the whole the events kept me interested. I also thought that it ended well. I feel like lately half of the books I’ve read end in the middle of a story. As a result I’m becoming a little wary of any first in a series. This one had a real ending, while still being open for the continuation of the series.