A review by aliasaurora
Bonded and Betrothed by Rachel Callahan

3.0

The book starts out rough, with a sluggish funeral scene wherein FMC exerts her new alpha power against the priest unnecessarily and refers to her late father’s widow as “step-monster”; a cringeworthy term in itself, made worse by the fact that FMC specifically mentions that she started calling her that from the first moment her dad told her he was remarrying—meaning that FMC never gave the woman a chance—and the same appears to be true for her half-sister, an eight-year-old child whom FMC mentally dismisses as she’s lamenting the fact that her sister and her father’s widow are permitted by his will to live in his home and receive an allowance (in FMC’s control) from his estate.

It’s an ugly look for an MC, to be this controlling and resentful of her grieving family, so I started from a place of intense dislike that she had to overcome to get back in my good graces. FMC mentions how she blames herself for her mother’s death

Spoiler

(hit by a drunk driver on the way to pick FMC up at the age of 16)

but instead of humanizing her, I’m also thinking the author decided to invent things for FMC to feel guilty about instead of being self-aware enough to realize she is already flawed.

The FMC’s first actions in her new role as Alpha of her pack are all about cowing people with her alpha powers and rejecting her father’s plans and legacy because she’s against the concept of arranged marriage—so stubbornly in fact that it doesn’t matter if it would strengthen her pack during a time of transition, and not even if he was her fated mate.

Spoiler

Which he is.

Her tendency to use her alpha power to push down all dissent in her ranks belies her stated goals of bringing her pack into the twenty-first century and having betas she can rely on to call her out when she’s wrong. She is actually surprised that

Spoiler

three of her mates are alphas who

manage to work together without constant power struggles, probably because she has so many power struggles within her own ranks and is terrified to show any emotions in public, at home, or in the shifter club she owns, lest any emotion other than cool, collected dominance and disinterest cause other shifters within her pack to challenge her. It’s actually kinda confusing because she is stated to be the *only* alpha wolf in her pack, not just the head honcho capital-A Alpha, and packs can’t be run by beta wolves, so who would challenge her? Is this paranoia even justified?

Throughout the book, FMC devastatingly strings along her hopelessly enamored childhood best friend with a

Spoiler

fake engagement,

while hating her stepmother for the horrible crimes of offering to organize an

Spoiler

engagement party

on her behalf, wanting to keep her husband’s ashes with her, and alluding to how hard it must be for her little sister, having lost a parent at the age of eight, which FMC strangely takes as a personal slight directed at her and her mother, who she lost when she was sixteen.

Adding to the FMC’s hypocrisy is the fact that after

Spoiler

leaving her pack for ten years, only returning after her fathers murder,

she tries to step into her new role with zero knowledge of the privilege she holds, which the bad guy pointed out in his villainous monologue. His people have been marginalized and still live in poverty, while she lives in a gorgeous manor when she’s not living it up in NYC

Spoiler

laundering daddy’s illegal gun money.

She even has the nerve to think that her ridiculous guilt over her mom’s death is comparable to Zeke

Spoiler

being separated from his identical twin before he was old enough to remember, not being told he was a wolf his entire childhood, growing up with a druggie mom and her abusive boyfriends, being taken from his mother into foster care at the age of twelve, and eventually becoming a hit man (a profession he clearly despises and did not choose for himself) and living with all that guilt.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, with FMC bonded

Spoiler

to one mate

and betrothed

Spoiler

to another.

From the title alone, I had actually expected more of a resolution to either of those issues, or at least for her to get to know her mates better, but the plot is so incredibly dense and pressed for time, with the entire book happening over the course of just a couple days. It feels mostly like a setup to a larger story arc, and the characters’ personal journey was pretty shallow by comparison. Somehow I doubt any of the personality issues I brought up with the FMC will be fixed in the next book, which leaves me reticent to continue the series. Eh, maybe?