Title: Kept
Author: Shawntelle Madison
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Coveted #2
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Number of Pages: 336
Source: Netgalley
Cover Note: The artist got one of the guys looks totally wrong. One is blonde!
Fresh from defending her pack in battle, Natalya Stravinsky, a whip-smart werewolf with a lovable neurotic streak, wants a little rest and relaxation. Once an outcast, she’s now eager to rejoin the ranks of her New Jersey pack, and has even gotten a handle on her obsessive urge to hoard holiday ornaments. Yet Nat barely has time to revel in her progress before the next crisis comes howling at her door.
Nat’s father has suddenly gone missing, captured by the Russian werewolf mafia. And as Nat steps up to save her dad from a mob boss’s deadly game, two men step in to play another round for her heart: her gorgeous alpha ex-boyfriend, Thorn, and her new flame, the sweetly sensitive wizard Nick. With her life growing more harried by the minute, Nat must stay cool, calm, and collected or else risk losing everything.
You know those books where the entire time you're reading it you just want to shake some sense into the heroine, then along comes the ending and it's just so amazingly wonderful that you forget whatever problems you had with the heroine or the story line in general? That's how I felt with this book.
Kept has one main plot: Natalya trying to get her father back with two sub plots: Natalya trying to get back into the pack and her relationship with Thorn. I really enjoyed the storyline of Natalya getting her father back from when he goes missing because she grows so much as a person while doing it. She tries to overcome her many fears, and has a group of friends willing to help her out that surprises her. I enjoyed watching her become a stronger person. However, I got so into this part of the story line that I forgot about the other one: her trying to get back into the pack. I would have liked to have seen these merge together more instead of them being almost two different parts.
When the story line with her father ended, I was honestly surprised that there was so much left in the book and then I remembered that she still had pack issues to deal with. The pack story line made me a little crazy because while I could understand Natalya wanting to prove herself to them, I don't think they deserved her loyalty because they just gave up on her when she needed them the most. That being said, Natalya is determined to join the pack no matter what anyone else thinks of her-she wants to do for her own reasons, and I liked that a lot. Natalya's relationship with Thorn the alpha of the pack, hasn't been the same since he left town 5 years ago. She never got over him. Even though he's in a forced engagement, the two are still drawn to each other.
We learn more about what happened to Thorn while he was gone, and why he wasn't able to help her when she needed him to. There are some parts of the Thorn/Nat relationship that readers may have a problem with, but without spoiling anything I can say I was totally ok with it, mainly because of how Nat dealt with it and because I hated Thorns forced finance. She was just evil, lol. The ending with these two was just made of wonderful and I really hope this series continues because I can't wait to see the characters grow.
