Forbidden Wolf by C.R. Robertson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Intricate complexity. This is the first book I have read by the talented C.R. Robertson, and I feel it was the perfect series for me personally to be introduced to her work. Forbidden Wolf is the first book in the Shadow Chronicles series. It is a supernatural retelling of Romeo and Juliet to a degree. Told primarily from Tasha’s perspective we are given glimpses of Levi’s letting the reader know he feels the same as her.
Vampire Tasha is about to turn twenty-one, the age for conscription into the army, to fight in a war she doesn’t believe in. Lycan Levi is also twenty-one and about to join his species army for the war when during their last summer everything changes. Tasha was never like the other girls her age; boys never really caught her attention, but she was prepared for the next twenty years to carry out her duty to her coven and species. Twenty years being mandatory service time in the army and breeding programs before being allowed to follow your own specialties or to be free. Levi is different from the others in his pack. He has black fur and mentions that the color of your wolf is tied to your abilities, he is often left alone. One fateful night changes everything either of them had been raised to believe. Thinking the bite of the other would kill them Tasha and Levi indulge in conversation with the enemy, but after talking and he protects her from the sun she is conflicted and questioning everything she had ever been told. Levi was stunned by the creature that is Tasha, he had been raised believing vampires were savage monsters and yet she was the gentlest, most caring thing he had ever seen. A plan for twenty years when their mandatory conscription is over, they will meet in Paris under the Eiffel Tower and once again just be lovers having a reunion. Time jumps accord five years and then ten. Ten years later Tasha and Levi are reunited on the battlefield. Both species are being savagely slaughtered by something new.
Ten years have passed, do they still feel the same for each other? Can Levi and Tasha succeed in finding out what is killing everyone they know? Will they rekindle what they had that summer in the forest? The world the author describes not only conjures the images in your mind but sometimes the smells. The characters leave nothing and everything on the table, their complexity not only personally but how they interact and react to the same situations is relatable and understandable. Once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down and now I cannot wait to begin book two, Forbidden Mate, to see what happens next for Tasha and Levi and how they confront what’s coming next.

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