Review by ktbeth143 - (Un)bidden

ktbeth143 's review for:

(Un)bidden by Melissa Haag

3.0

3 ⭐️ // An Intriguing Semi-Back Story to the Judgement of Six Series

Disclaimer: this review is for “(Un)Bidden” and “Thomas’ Heart” together as I read them in tandem to each other.

Charlene is a 15 year old running away from home because she’s afraid her special mind powers are going to get herself and her loved ones hurt. After a few weeks of hitchhiking and sleeping in the woods, she stumbles onto an abandoned, run-down former Hippi convent. She decides to set up camp there for the coming winter, knowing that once the weather changes she won’t be able to continue surviving sleeping outdoors. Only she doesn’t realize she’s actually stumbled onto a werewolf sanctuary. Then, she’s attacked by two male werewolves who mistake her for a female of her kind—thrusting her into a wild culture of a secret half-human race that is dying out unless they learn to adapt and accept their human side. Thomas is part of this race, and when he hears there’s a human at their sanctuary, he’s determined to get rid of her. Until he sees her for the first time and realizes she’s his mate. Now, he’ll do anything to keep her, including learning how to be human. But Charlene’s got secrets, and these secrets threaten not only the security of her relationship with Thomas, but his pack, the werewolf race, and humanity.

I give 3⭐️ ratings to books I enjoyed, but have critiques. Here’s what I thought could have been better:

I didn’t like how young Charlene was in comparison with the timeline of the story. She’s 15, and even as her feelings for Thomas grow, she makes it clear her age concerns her in the claiming/mating process. Next to her secret mind controlling ability, it’s one of the main reasons she puts of mating him for so long even though she sees how not mating him is affecting him and the pack, who she’s also grown to care for. But there’s still this overwhelming expectation she mate with him. The author tries to address this in a conversation between Mary—a female werewolf who is also 15-and Charlene, by dwindling it down to culture differences. But Charlene is a human, and Mary wants to be more human (she’s also holding out on her own mate when it comes to mating), so it makes more sense to extend the timeline and make Thomas and Gregory wait until Charlene and Mary are older and ready to take that step. But Winnifred, the elder-who claims she wants what’s in the best interest of the pack and Charlene because she’s a potential mate—while never pushing Charlene, still clearly expects Charlene—a 15 year old—to have sex. And it’s not the exploration sex or casual sex 15 year olds typically engage in, it’s sex that equals marriage to their culture. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a 15 year old, especially one who we know from other books in the series is supposed to be a part of team the judges morality. Granted, when that happens, she’s a grown woman. But no wonder Gabby, Michelle, and Bethi all made a big deal about how young Charlene looked to them. She was practically forced to marry at age 15!
This story does an okay job setting up what Charlene and Thomas’ ultimate role in the judgement of six will be, as well as answering the question of “why did the urbat wait so long to start tracking down and attacking these gifted women,” but it still leaves questions about the world of the series. How do werewolves know how to speak English if they never associate with humans and rarely associate with each other outside of wolf-form? Why are there some things from human culture they need clarification on, but others they don’t? If werewolves are typically bred, born and live in the wild, how did Winnifred come to the point of feeling so strongly they should be a part of the human world, to the point she actually went to school to get a job as a teacher? (Winnifred’s story could be a cool companion novel as well). And this book explains how Grey became an elder, but we don’t ever meet Sam in this book. Yet we know he’s an elder from Gabby’s book.
The way Charlene’s claiming is handled by the elder’s in this book is a slap in the face to Gabby, who was told her book that her mate had six months to convince her of his claim before he could be challenged for the right to claim her. A guy challenges Thomas for Charlene after she’s claimed him and she rejects it—and Grey and Winnifred as the elders AGREE with her—on the principle that because she has to be the one to bite her mate, the claim is entirely her choice. If they agreed with Charlene’s logic here, why didn’t they accept that logic with Gabby and Clay? It’s not like either Charlene or Gabby was going to willing bite the neck and bind themselves to a werewolf they didn’t know when Thomas and Clay both worked hard to pursue each of these women, especially not after witnessing this strange werewolf kill the man they were falling in love with.
The pacing of these two stories—even together because they practically follow the same plot points just from different POVs—was meh. Thomas’s attitude change and pursuit of Charlene was the main hook for me, the rest was kind of boring, mainly because I felt like it wasn’t really giving me answers to things I didn’t already know. I think it could have been more engaging over all if it included an introduction to Sam (he could have been introduced when Winnifred and Jonas put out the call to recruit more elders) and if it included how Grey found Carlos (instead of just showing us Grey’s desire to be a dad, and it could have happened when Grey was sent out to find out to find and convince families to come to the sanctuary since he found some family packs tragically murdered during his investigation).
The conflict resolution of this story, I felt, was weakened by its role as a filler story in the series, and by the fact that Charlene didn’t reveal everything about her power to Thomas. I actually agree why she didn’t. Her fear he would tell Winnifred who would then see her as a threat to werewolf kind and have to kill her makes sense. But so much of the plot of this story revolves around Thomas winning Charlene’s trust and heart. Also, I don’t think her ability was completely explained, because she told Winnifred and Thomas the truth about most of it. I’m kind of confused about exactly what she left out.

Moving on to what I liked about this story:

I didn’t care for Charlene or Thomas in the other books (in fact when I originally read this series I skipped their story all together). This might have been because I felt like they were too old compared to the other protagonists. But this book made me like both of them.
I loved, and wished there was more of, Thomas and Grey’s relationship. They are great brothers.
I also didn’t care for Mary and Gregory in the other books, mainly because Michelle saw them as nosy neighbors. But I liked learning their back story through Thomas and Charlene’s story. I nearly cried when I realized their sons, Paul and Henry, who are row try significant side characters in the other books, are named after Mary’s dad and uncle. In fact, you can add to the list of things I didn’t like the fact that the original Paul and Henry basically just disappear into thin air in Charlene and Thomas’ story.

I think you should read Charlene and Thomas’ story if you’re reading the rest of the Judgement of Six series, although keep in mind it is a filler book and therefore you may not find it as engaging as the other books. I also recommend it to readers who enjoy werewolf-human romances where the human is thrown into the backwards-secret-society of werewolves because he/she is the mate of an alpha.