Trial By Fire by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

About the book

Trial By Fire is the second book in the Raised By Wolves series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. It was published by Quercus on 26^th May 2011 and the book is 304 pages long.

Synopsis (Taken from Goodreads.com)

Bryn is finally settling into her position as alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack—or at least, her own version of what it means to be alpha when you’re a human leading a band of werewolves. Then she finds a teenage boy bleeding on her front porch. Before collapsing, he tells her his name is Lucas, he’s a Were, and Bryn’s protection is his only hope.

But Lucas isn’t part of Bryn’s pack, and she has no right to claim another alpha’s Were. With threats—old and new—looming, and danger closing in from all sides, Bryn will have to accept what her guardian Callum knew all along. To be alpha, she will have to give in to her own animal instincts and become less human. And, she’s going to have to do it alone.

What I thought

It had been a long time since I read the first book in this series. It had been so long since I had read it that I could even really remember what had happened. Before reading this one, I had to go back and re-read my review of Raised By Wolves just so I wouldn’t feel completely lost.

However, once I started reading Trial by Fire, the whole story came flooding back. Although Jennifer Lynn Barnes does not do a re-cap of the previous book, there are little hints and mentions about things that had happened previously throughout the book. Bryn is now the alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack and is just finding her feet. After saving Chase and bringing him into the pack, Bryn now has to go back to dealing with normal life. She and her pack friends still have to go to high school and act like everything is normal.

Things quickly change from being normal though. One day, a wolf named Lucas turns up on Bryn’s doorstep claiming that his own pack is mistreating him and begs to be let into the Cedar Ridge Pack instead of his own. Bryn knows that pack laws say that Lucas’ alpha needs to give up his claim on him before he can transfer packs but knowing that the alpha in question is Shay, she knows this is not going to happen. Lucas also isn’t everything that he seems to be either though and brings some really big trouble to Bryn and her friends.

I really enjoyed the addition of Lucas into this story as it opened up many different things in this book. Not only does Lucas’ appearance give a lot of depth into the politics of werewolf packs but it also brought in a coven who cause a lot of problems. The coven was by far the best addition to this book as it was something so different to werewolves. I really enjoyed learning about the coven, who they were and what they could do. They were an exciting part of this book and I loved the whole plot that surrounded them.

Trial By Fire also gives us a chance to get to know Bryn better. There is plenty going on around her which makes her react in different ways. It was also interesting to see how differently Bryn acted around different members of her pack. Although they all have a bond and are connected together, she did act differently, more closely to some members than she did with others. I could understand why though as the pack members all differ in age so Bryn was bound to be closer to some than others. My only real negative about Trial By Fire was the lack of time that Bryn and Chase got together. While it was nice to see a book that wasn’t fuelled only by the romance between characters, a little more of it would have been nice.

I really enjoyed Trial By Fire and now can’t wait to read the next book in the series.