Blog Tour + Book Review & Giveaway | Bound To You by Alyssa Brandon

Bound To You
by Alyssa Brandon
Published by: Swoon Reads
Publication date: April 10, 2018
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Buy Links:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo

Synopsis:
She’s met her mate . . . and he’s met his match.

Megan Ross has been waiting her whole life for her mate to come and sweep her off her feet. But the wolf she meets on the beach is NOT the sweet gentle boy she’s been dreaming of. Instead, he’s a warrior, one whose suffering has led him to lock his heart away in a prison as cold and hard as a diamond, who fights to resist the bond and their deep attraction.

Far from home, with a soulmate who is still a stranger, Megan learns that the path to true love isn’t quite as straight and easy as she thought . . .

A stubborn teen faces off with her brooding, indifferent (but super hot) soulmate in this unique and sexy take on a classic paranormal romance story. Chosen by readers like you for Macmillan’s young adult imprint Swoon Reads, Alyssa Brandon’s debut novel Bound to You is guaranteed to make readers swoon, sigh, and maybe even cry before it’s over.My rating: 

The happily ever after isn’t a destination…Life isn’t a fairy tale. You don’t go through trials and everything works out perfectly. Life is hard and messy. All the time.

Omega wolves usually found their mate at sixteen and it happened around the time for most female alpha wolves. However, Megan Ross has not found hers yet. On her eighteenth birthday, her father, the Alpha of Alphas, threw a party where every wolf pack on the East Coast were invited. When a surge of magic and bond were connected, she finally met the wolf mate she has waiting for but sadly, not the fairy tale like she had always imagined.

Warrior wolf like James Sandleholm is a fierce class of wolves who once protected their race against wraiths. Having a troubled past, he didn’t expect that he will find a mate in Megan. As he realized that Megan was his mate, after all, he decided that not completing the mate bond would let him do what he always did and still be in control with his emotions.

Being taken away from her family and making Megan live in an empty floor castle, what James only did even from their first meeting was to ignore her, being rude and down-right mean. She didn’t know why he was so cold and distant towards her even with her attempts to get his attention for her to know him better. But is it too late for James to let her in?

Megan’s character from the beginning of the story was obviously naïve and her views on love were clearly all about hearts and flowers or the ones that only ended like those in the fairy tales. She badly wanted someone to love and love her back, an alpha wolf that would always be the knight and shining armor of her dreams. Because she was never anyone’s first priority and even being a part of a big family where her parents didn’t pay her attention, she felt alone and alienated. So she navigated for love from other people, her mate. So, I get why she thought finding James would change that.

James, on the other hand, was the typical alpha male character (that went on and on from other romance stories I read) who was detached, mean and insist to resist because, yeah! He has baggage — the ones who don’t want to show weakness and losing control. He knew he wanted Megan not just because his wolf did, but because he really likes her. What made him different though was if Megan was all expectations, James was more like reality.

Because of the damage his past done to him, he fear that everything that has something to do with magic, of being a warrior wolf, was forced and could consume him, when all he wanted was just to fall in love like a normal guy in a normal way without the magic of being a wolf. Not like Megan who found her one true mate by being bound from magic, which was like love at first sights, rushed and instant. She was trying to make James become what she perceived a mate would be like since she was young — expectations versus reality.

It has been a long time since I read a book about werewolves with a setting like Sandleholm Manor, a castle taken straight from the set of Dracula movies; funny that Dracula and werewolves were mythological enemies and it was good that there were no vampires mentioned as it will be another Twilight-like story again. The flow of the story and the character dynamics between the two main with pent up sexual tension (which was more like New Adult-ish than YA to me) was actually good. But there are some important potential plot points that were not clearly developed.

It was mentioned that there’s a Peace Treaty going on with the wolf packs and most of them don’t know the still existence of wraiths, Dementor like creatures with claws and glowing eyes who were fed by wolves’ energy, magic, and spirit. Only the alphas and warrior wolves knew about them and I waited that somehow there was an involvement or some kind of werewolf action that could happen within the story.

But even the minor characters who were part of James’ pack felt like they just pop into the scenery whenever it’s convenient and just went along with their lives patrolling or killing wraiths without even having a real connection or making the story more interesting. Robin, Tommy and James father, Tryst, however, may have played essential roles in the overall plot; I think it was related majorly on how Megan and James realized the bond between them.

While there was a buildup to something like Lucy being hewdevi, the author leaves her character unexplored and even before the story ended, she became a mystery — what had she has to do with wraiths? I expected that she would be a turning point into something bigger having a heavy impact on the storyline. Unfortunately, it never came close to some kind of grand revelation like the one I thought. Unless maybe the author would decide to make a sequel for this even if the ending sounds like it’s impossible? That, I still have to know.

Altogether, I still enjoyed and like the story. Alyssa Brandon was able to highlight the difference between the expectations we have on love and what is in it as a reality on a fast-paced roll which I would still recommend if you like to read something about werewolves.

Thank you to NetGalley, MacMillian Children’s Publishing Group – Swoon Reads, Xpresso Book Tours and Alyssa Brandon for providing me an eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review!

About The Author:
Alyssa Brandon is a recent college graduate from Sweden who enjoys reading, doing yoga, puzzles, and, of course, writing. Her big passion is urban fantasy but she enjoys a good romance or thriller just as much. She was named one of Wattpad’s most followed people and won the Watty Award  2013.

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