The Wolf Within - Sondrae Bennett

After reading this book you will never watch Twilight again. The Wolf Within takes the quintessential high school crush to new levels. Brendan and Julie have been in each others lives since they were children. Brendan having lost his full families support at an early age was taken in by Julie’s family as a welcome guest at the table whenever possible. However, Brendan is closer in age to Julie’s sister and therefore a good friend and classmate to Laurie. This significant age gap forced Brendan, regardless of his mating urges and infatuation for Julie, to keep his distance not to mention her three huge brothers standing watch. This subsequently caused Julie to misread why he and Laurie are close and why he is always “around” the house so much. Forcing her to run away to college to try to get him out of her system.

Once again, Ms. Bennett captures the subtleties that really make a relationship work. She manages to tell a story of pure romance and charm as the couple begins to explore what is between them upon Julie returning from college. Julie is first introduced in Arctic Winds. But it is in this book that the depth of her feelings of being fully human in a mostly shifter, everyone except her dad, family and town are explored. Brendan shows her that shifting isn’t what makes someone unique or special but it is who you are that counts. Though Julie refuses to see the truth for fear of rejection, Brendan persists and the issuing courtship is one for the fairy tale books. He is ever gentle, patient and persistent is forcing her to see both how precious she is and how precious what they feel for each other is.

The book brings back more of her family characters since she has returned home. Both couples from the previous two books along with her sister play a role in the story line. The plot has a nice twist bringing in some pack politics with neighboring shifter packs providing a bit of drama to keep things exciting and adding interest to see what will come next both for the couple and for future books. This is another great short story for Ms. Bennett and perfect for a quick afternoon read on a snowy day.

I give this one four chocolate dipped strawberries!