The Accidental Werewolf – Dakota Cassidy

Marty Andrews has made it to lavender, the first rung on the Bobbie-Sue cosmetics hierarchy, and has her gaze firmly set on sky blue. Her two newest recruits are disappointing – neither seems to have the dedication required to progress in the organization – but that’s nothing compared to the changes she’s noticed since that run in between her darling teacup poodle Muffin and a giant dog in a dark alley last week – while saving her beloved pet Marty got a tiny bite from the beast, and though there can’t possibly be a connection between the two events she’s become more emotionally erratic, is somehow no longer a summer on the Bobbie-Sue color wheel, and she’s noticed a disturbing increase in her body hair. The handsome guy telling her he’s a werewolf who accidentally nipped her, thereby making her one, too, is just icing on the cake.
I so liked the review I read somewhere and the premise for this series (three women accidentally turned into supernatural creatures and finding love in the process) that I reserved this and the next one before my library had even bought them. I cannot say how glad I am I didn’t buy them.
From the first page I was unhooked:

Well, it was official.
Lavender was soooooo not in her color wheel any more. Not looking like this, anyway.
It clashed with her hair and made her skin look sallow.
Marty Andrews was now an autumn. Thus, fall colors would best suit her new pallor. Greens, gold, and a couple of shades of yellow were currently her complexion’s new friends.
But the color lavender? Not so much.
That was once the color she’d been so suited to. A spring color. Or was it winter?
Spring, winter, spring, winter?
Sweet mother, she couldn’t even remember
her seasons of color. Where were her color-wheel-of-life skills? Each season had colors it represented. Any woman worth her salt knew that. Didn’t they?

This is what’s going through her head as the tall, dark, wolfishly handsome man is breaking the news to her. Now, I believe you can be intelligent and a cosmetics company rep, that being career focused regardless of the career can be important. But Marty is both shallow and unable to prioritise anything beyond her Bobbie-Sue trajectory. Shallowness is one of my pet peeves about chick lit as a genre – though by no means a requirement, many authors write as though it were, and Cassidy is no exception. In addition, and the two do often go hand in hand, Marty’s self-absorbed well past the line of narcissism, a trait I find unattractive in life and particularly in my heroine. If I can’t connect with the protagonist I feel little impetus to continue reading, and I not only disliked Marty but I had no interest in seeing how (or if) her transformation changes her character or life.
The writing wasn’t bad, but it didn’t appeal to me, with lines like “he had the thickest, most fabulous hair, with the kind of volume only a Nine Inch Nails concert had.” I quibble with the way Cassidy uses dichotomy: “he was a complete dichotomy” because he cradled her poodle tenderly but fills the room with his dominant power. But mostly I abandoned The Accidental Werewolf at the end of chapter four because I didn’t connect with anything in the novel at all. - Alex