When Ward Johannsen’s little girl Ava shifted into a werewolf, she was taken into custody by the feds and shipped off to the nearest pack, all ties between father and daughter severed. Ward burned every bridge he had discovering her location, and then almost froze to death in the Colorado mountains tracking her new pack down. And that’s just the beginning of his struggle.
Henry Dormer is an alpha werewolf and an elite black ops soldier who failed his last mission. He returns home, hoping for some time to recuperate and help settle the pack’s newest member, a little pup named Ava who can’t shift back to her human form. Instead he meets Ward, who refuses to leave his daughter without a fight. The two men are as different as night and day, but their respect for each other strikes a spark of mutual interest that quickly grows into a flame. They might find something special together-love, passion, and even a family-if they can survive trigger-happy pack guardians, violent werewolf politics, and meddling government agencies that are just as likely to get their alpha soldiers killed as bring them home safely.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
First, the good: the author has created a fantastic setting with built-in dramatic tension. In this world, werewolves are not a secret to humans. The (United States) government has classified them as a dangerous subspecies and keeps them in strictly-controlled, isolated camps, cut off from human contact and wholly reliant on the government for their food, clothing, and every aspect of their lives. In “exchange” for this support, every pack alpha is required to be part of the military. Specifically, they are called in for the nasty jobs: assassinations, difficult extractions, and various black ops duties. The mental toll that this takes is an important part of this story.
Ward and Henry are really great characters, and it is easy to empathize with both of them. The lengths which Ward will go to be with and help Ava are wonderful. This is balanced by Henry’s duty to his pack, his own concern for Ava, and his weariness and shell-shock from the terrible missions he must undertake. There is a hint of the “true mate” trope, but it’s not explicit. The way the characters are written that’s OK for me. They fit together well.
Now the not-so-good: It’s one thing to surprise the reader with plot twists that confound their guesses of where the story will go. It’s another thing to put three or four of Chekhov’s guns on the mantle in the first act and then just…leave them there, untouched. This makes the overall story feel incomplete. This is surprising given that, per this post, the author’s original intent was for this book to be a one-off. On the bright side it sounds like that decision will be reconsidered (eventually). When that time comes I will gladly pick up the next book, both because I love the setting and because the potential main characters are quite interesting themselves.
Is Off the Beaten Path is worth reading? I would say yes, if only because even with these complaints I really did enjoy the story.