This book/series has been on my TBR for such a long time. Everyone around me seems to love it, it's been mentioned positively on a few podcasts and book blogs I'm subscribed to, and so I've formed these high expectations and started fearing a disappointment if the story doesn't live up to them. :D Well, I'm happy to say I've enjoyed it very very much, even if it didn't turn out to be quite what I expected! 

For some reason (maybe because of the series covers? shouldn't I know better by now than to judge a book by its cover?) I was preparing a very different vibe. Something slower-paced, perhaps, mooodier, maybe even darkly lyrical—a book for a rainy day. Instead, the tone is snarky, in that highly relatable self-deprecating sort of way, the narrative moves reasonably fast, and in many ways I would describe the book as a fairly gritty murder mystery.

As much as the investigation is at the heart of the plot, it is really well-balanced with the romantic storyline and the protagonist's character arc. I absolutely loved Dayton's arc, by the way! He's exactly the kind of protagonist I find instantly likable, even though I recognize my reaction could be really different if he wasn't the POV character. He surely doesn't act likable a lot of the time, what with his emotional constipation and his tendency to accidentally send weird mixed signals instead of talking, but the author does an excellent job of showing why he's that way. Besides, he grows and learns, even though sometimes it's in baby steps! I loved his dynamic with Park and the way they gradually established trust and how the steamy scenes genuinely contributed to character development. Park himself is an awesome character and so well-written—even though the reader never gets his POV and there are plenty of secrets about his backstory, it's so easy to see how his feelings and his views of the situations shift, change, and develop over the course of the story. Easy for the reader, but not at all for Dayton, and considering Park's every appearance on the page is filtered through Dayton's POV, I'd say it's a testament to the author's skill!

The mystery plot was also rather well-done; I strongly suspected the bad guys from rather early in the book, but the author kept throwing me off and making me think I got it wrong with at least one of them, and the exact way things played out definitely turned out to be a surprise. It was exciting to read, and I can't wait to learn more about the werewolf society in the sequels. The tropes it's built around seem fairly traditional so far, but I have a feeling there might be a few surprises and twists down the line.

The book isn't without its flaws. There are a few sections that could definitely benefit from more editing, either because the prose bets awkward or because the author tries to get too many things done on one page and the pacing gets out of whack. Funnily enough, both of those things were more prominent around the beginning and toward the end, while the middle part mostly flows smoothly. (My reason to find it funny: I've always found middles the hardest to handle when I write, and I know it's a thing for many others.) Still, those hiccups didn't take a thing away from my overall enjoyment and I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the series!