Once Bitten

by Kalayna Price

[Angie]

Once Bitten is one of those books that I probably would have liked a lot more if I had read it when it was first published (or at least when I first purchased it). Of course, that just means that I don't think it's held up over the years and wasn't that original to start with. Kita is a shapeshifter who has left her home world to live among the humans, but she's being hunted. Then she's attacked, left for dead, and turned into a vampire to save her life. If that's not enough, now she's being held responsible for the attacks plaguing her city and has two nights to find the real attacker.

There are a couple of things that I really liked about Once Bitten, although they weren't enough to fully hold my interest. First, I thought it was interesting that shifters don't live in the human world. They're from a place called Firth. I wanted to know more about this place! There's plenty of talk about "gates" opening at the full moon, but that's about it. Do other supernaturals live there, too? I don't know. The second thing was that it has a short time frame. These are my favorite! I love races against the clock and just seeing how much stuff can happen to one person in just a day or two! And Kita certainly goes through a lot!

Unfortunately, Once Bitten ultimately didn't do it for me. I felt like I had read this basic premise before (which isn't surprising), but it didn't do anything new. In fact, the whole set up reminded me a lot of the Shifters series by Rachel Vincent. In both, the main characters are shifters who left their kind, can do partial shifts and accidentally infected humans without knowing it, and then get in trouble it for it while being dragged kicking and screaming back to their homes. But Shifters did it a lot better, even though Kita got the added conflict of also being a newly turned vampire.

Once Bitten was just an okay read for me. I wasn't really bored with it, but I also just didn't care that much about Kita or her problems. I think if there had been more about where she came from and her history there, I could have become more invested. But as it is, it opens up with her running from hunters, immediately becoming a vampire, and no time to get to know her as a shifter before all of these other problems piled up.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.