Book Review: Taken by Storm by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Taken by Storm
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Publication: EgmontUSA (May 22, 2012)


Description: In the eye of a storm stands Bryn, the alpha of the Cedar Ridge werewolf pack. She is young. Female. Human. Physically weaker than any werewolf, she could never survive a battle with another alpha, the strongest, fiercest, and canniest of his pack.  

Yet she cannot refuse a summons from the werewolf Senate. A rogue werewolf is attacking humans. The risk of exposure threatens to destroy pack life, and the center of the crisis is Cedar Ridge territory—her own lands.

Bryn has no choice but to attend the meeting, a gathering of the most powerful werewolves on the continent.  The subject is the rogue wolf, but Bryn knows the other packs want what she has. Her territory. Her females. Her pack.

They want her death.

Werewolf law prevents the other alphas from making a direct attack. It also prevents her former alpha, the mysterious and powerful Callum, from coming to her aid. But it doesn’t prevent Bryn from knowing what she wants. To keep her lands. To protect her pack.

To survive.



My Thoughts: Human, though raised by werewolves, Bryn is the alpha of her own Cedar Ridge pack. For reasons detailed in the first two books of this series (Raised by Wolves and Trial by Fire) Bryn's pack is unusual because it contains eight females. Female werewolves are an incredibly small minority of all werewolves. The facts that Bryn is female and human and has so many females in her pack make her a target  of werewolf politics.


Bryn's major rival is Shay, the alpha of the Snake Bend pack. He has been plotting and scheming to take over her pack and her females for three books now. It doesn't help that Bryn's second-in-command and best friend is Shay's brother. 


This time his scheme include finding a way to claim Maddy who was a former pack member of Bryn's and who now might be Rabid and killing humans in the no-man's-land that borders each werewolf territory. Bryn and some companions have to find Maddy, stop the killing of humans, and find a way to outwit Shay by using werewolf laws against him.


This was an exciting story with lots of adventure and danger. Bryn has so many decisions to make in order to be the alpha of her pack and each decision comes at great cost. Sometimes, often in fact, she doesn't have any good choices and has to pick the least bad of her options. 


I recommend this to readers who love werewolf stories but also recommend reading the first two books in the series before this one. I don't think that this one would stand alone well. 


Favorite Quote:

He wasn’t pushing, wasn't asking me to change, but I knew he wanted me to have choices that I would never have. I couldn’t blame him for that - not when he was willing to give up his choices for me.

But it would have been nice, really nice, if being together hadn’t required that kind of sacrifice. If neither of us had known, in skin and bones and blood-deep certainty, that I would always come first for Chase, and the pack would come first for me.

I bought this one. You can buy a copy here too.