cover image The Untamed One

The Untamed One

Ronda Thompson. St. Martin's Press, $6.99 (311pp) ISBN 978-0-312-93574-0

The second book in Thompson's Wild Wulfs of London trilogy follows the attempts of Lord Jackson Wulf to break the lycanthropic curse unleashed inside of him by love. In the belief that killing a witch will release his family from the werewolf hex, Jackson seeks out the sorceress Lucinda, finding a beautiful young woman rather than the hag he expects. After saving Lucinda from the throes of a painful breach birth, Jackson finds himself unable to kill her. Instead, she promises to cure him with her magic if he enters into a marriage of convenience, for the sake of protecting her son's identity. Lacking in both narrative and sexual tension, the book charts the couple's constant thrust and parry-though fewer thrusts than a story about a frustrated wolfman would suggest-in a struggle to discover each others' true motives. Though the series has both fans and promise, this faltering entry begs the question: if sexy paranormals can't get any satisfaction, how is a common reader supposed to?