50 Books in a Year: Book #35 The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

I was a little apprehensive to read this book 1] because I thought the first book How to Flirt with A Naked Werewolf was so funny and delicious I didn't think this book could possibly be as good and 2] I didn't really like Maggie as she was portrayed in the first book and thought that Harper would have to do a lot of work to make me like her while still being loyal to Mo and Cooper.

By gosh people she did it!

We see Maggie grow up a little at the end of How to Flirt with A Naked Werewolf, I can guess that it's just enough that we want to read a whole book about her. But, in this book, we truly see her transformation. She puts aside some deep seeded prejudices, recognizes that it's these prejudices that almost got her and her whole pack killed, and even accepts the faults in others when an encroaching pack tries to take over her land. In this respect, I think that Maggie may be a stronger character than her predecesor Mo. Maggie doesn't do what she doesn't want to do, Maggie communicates (which means those silly misunderstandings that happen in all romance novels don't last long) and the reason why she comes off as a bully in the first book and sometimes in this books is because she is so passionate about her love of family, her people and her wilderness.

In a believeable way, Maggie bumbles around trying to make the right choice of who to marry, while not understanding why she's drawn to a man who should be anything, but her type. There's a hilarious scene were Nick suspects Maggie, in werewolf form, of being Mo and in a fit of crazy jealousy, she bites him on the rear and then regrets that decision everytime she sees him limping around. She makes fun of baby showers and other kinds of girlie rites of passage (my kind of girl). She is honest and sincere (almost to a fault). She is the kind of female hero that I'd like to see more often in any book I read.

Cool things I like about this series:
1. If I hadn't read the first one, I would have still understood what was going on in this one. She tells us just enough that we get whats going on and, as a person who read the first one, I didn't feel like I was being beaten over the head with the information.
2. You aren't going to find a sex scene until page 230 of this book and, yes, that's a cool thing, as it lends to plot and character development. There is sexual tension, but it's of the cute romantic comedy variety and it seems that in werewolf land, once you've mated they're yours for life...so sex and biting (the werewolf kind) are taken pretty darn seriously.
3. All of the characters in this series seem attainable. Nick, who is the love interest in this book, is a nerdy werewolf hunter who has to be saved, at least once, by Maggie because he's too dorky to realize he's in danger. And, he sounds just yummerrific in glasses, carrying a load of books on the extraterrastrial. Maggie, too, possesses typical, but not redundant and cliched, and likeable strong female lead attributes.

I am in love with this series and will definitely be reading all that Molly Harper decides to write, especially if they are books about Alaskan werewolves.