Alpha by Rachel Vincent

Werecats book 6

I bought this book.

I have been, since book 1, an avid and vocal supporter of Vincent’s work. I am sad to admit that I did not like Alpha.

My two big beefs of the whole series have been the overwhelming anti-feminist=evil diatribe (which largely remained balanced with other things in previous books) and Marc. In this book I, unlike a lot of people, found Marc to be an utter jerk. He purposefully humiliates and cruelly punishes Faythe in his efforts to “possess” her. I’ve actually talked to the author about this, and I do understand that there were pack politics at stake, but I wasn’t convinced by the book that this sort of “play” was needed. Marc’s a jerk in almost every scene, outright abusive in a few, and his “passion” and “desire” for Faythe is all right out of a textbook example of a case of an abusive relationship. This undermines the over all plot, that Faythe and her pride are fighting, ultimately, for the right of the women of the pride to be able to be more than just breeders, more than just objects to be possessed, own, tamed. I don’t see how we are supposed to hate Dean and Malone for their attempts to subvert and control Faythe, but Marc’s humiliation and cruelty is supposed to be okay. Furthermore I felt the whole book reinforced the idea that while Faythe and Marc’s relationship is intense that he would ultimately be unable to support her as an Alpha, seeing as he’s constantly trying to force to her to do things, playing emotional games with her while she’s trying to save her pack, and demanding that he be the only important thing in her life while everyone else is trying to tell her how much time and energy running a pride takes.

While I couldn’t put the book down and devoured it in just over a day, and I’m still a fan of Vincent’s power, style and world building skill, I feel like the two things that I hated most about the series were the focus of this book. The love triangle aspect got really old, really fast, especially with Marc having his jerk hat on the whole time. And like in Armageddon (the movie) I also got tired of everyone always anticipating Faythe’s moves, of everything that can go wrong doing so for the sake of tension.

I really, really wanted to love this book, but I just can’t.