Blind Date with a Werewolf by Patricia Briggs: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Blind Date with a Werewolf by Patricia Briggs

This is an in-between story to Briggs’ Alpha & Omega series and follows a side-character Asil Moreno, aka The Moor. He’s an ancient werewolf who has all but lost the ability to control his wolf and has lived with the Marrok’s pack for years so that the alpha can end his life should his wolf get free. He’s basically expected to die ever since.

But his ‘concerned friends’ think he has more to offer than hunting rouge werewolves. They’ve set a challenge for him and made it so he can’t easily refuse. He has to attend five dates of their choosing, with certain requirements about the duration of the date and number of bodies allowed at the end of it, which is zero.

The book consists of five short stories depicting each date. Some are new, some published earlier. I hadn’t read any of the latter and I think they’ve been reworked a little to form an organic whole for this book. Asil’s friends have been very creative in finding suitable dates for him and he can expect pretty much anything. He goes with open mind to each, so when one woman turns out to be a man—a prank by the boy’s friends—he’s not fazed and simply sets out to create a lovely evening for them both.

But one after another, the dates turn to some kind of carnage. There are vampires that he has to kill so they can’t prey on innocent people, black witches who have a reason to kill him, and damsels in distress to save. By the fourth date, he’s fairly sure there are larger forces in play than merely his concerned friends trying to liven up his life. And too many seem to have some kind of connection to his greatest enemy, his late foster daughter Mariposa who destroyed his life. Everything culminates in the final story, which puts him against a powerful vampire from his past.

But it’s not solely a carnage for him. The dates lead to a truly unexpected result: a woman whose mere presence calms his wolf. It makes him hope for the first time in centuries that he might not lose control of it, and that he might have a lovely future ahead of him still. If the vampire doesn’t kill him first.

This was a delightful, fairly fast read. All dates were interesting, except the second one which gave us only the aftermath. Asil turned out to be an intelligent and wryly amusing character who was a victim of his complicated past. The love-story suffered a little from the short form, as did the epic battle at the end, but that was only a small issue. All in all, this formed a great whole and a fun book.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.