For a hot romance, this one left me cold.

The plot seems rather by-the-numbers: Werewolf needs to find his soul-bound mate to become pack leader, finds her, and takes on his rivals when they try to ambush him. And that’s it.

Making the lead female deaf is an interesting idea, but unfortunately it is not a substitute for personality. The sex scenes are strangely not hot, and read rather as what is best called ikea erotica, containing the college frat-style shorthand for body parts that makes it giggly rather than intense.

The real problem is the characters. For a romance, the main relationship rings false: he doesn’t fall in love with her, they are just magically bound together. The main lead infantilises the female lead throughout, refusing to tell her what is going on – up to and including the need to have public sex. The male cast acknowledge that treating her like this will make her angry, but they just don’t care and assume she has no choice other than to go along with it. She comes across as a weak character because she does.

This book does suffer from a few of the major tropes in the genre – mate bonds, magic body parts – extremely bad science (wolves do not mate for life), and consent issues that may put some readers off. Any idea of a loving relationship falls flat – particularly when it turns out her brother’s been trying to pimp the female lead to every werewolf in the area in the hope one will decide to screw her, completely without her knowledge – and everyone is fine with this. There are absolutely no consequences for any of male leads in this book – and I’m not using names because there’s not much personality to them either.

Personally I was praying for her to grow a pair, shoot him in wolf form, and go and find someone who cares what she wants – or alternatively for her to pin him by the throat in wolf-form, give him a damn good scar and take over as leader.

Paranormal romance fans might like this, but there’s not much romance to it.