A Wolfish Dilemma (A Fairly Western Tale, #3)

by Kate Palmer

[phyllish]

A Wolfish Dilemma was a decent story with an interesting plot.  It is the second book in the series, the first being At the Stroke of Midnight, a Cinderella retelling.  I rated that book [rating stars="three-stars"].  The story has some characters from other books by the author, but can stand alone.  There was a very clever use of names in it, really playing on the various people and the characters they represent from Little Red Riding Hood.

Despite the look of the cover, A Wolfish Dilemma is not about werewolves or any other creepy creatures.  If I was not familiar with the works of Kate Palmer, I would not have picked up this book to read.

There were a few Bible verses in the book and references to God in the story, but it was not an overtly Christian story (and therefore I did not classify it as such).

This was a second publishing of the book - the author had indicated that she was so excited to get it published and had been running behind, so she rushed it to the release the first time.  As a result of the complaints she got, she pulled the book from Amazon, made edits and then re-released it. The re-release is the book I read, and I am sorry to say that I still saw so many editing and proofing errors it distracted from the story.

Ruby, the main character, was very talented and sweet, but maybe a little too over the top, able to do everything and always cheerful despite any difficulty.  Then again, this was a fairy tale re-telling, so maybe that is appropriate here.  :-)  I honestly am not sure which way I lean on this.

There were a couple of things in the story that bothered me.  The first was when Cliff and Ruby took his son Preston horse-back riding.  Preston obviously was on his own horse, and at one point it talked about them talking and leaving Preston on his own to let his horse drink while they talked a distance away.  I had a problem with this because the boy was only 5 years old.  I can't imagine he would have been left alone to do this even if he was only on a pony.

The second thing was when Cliff's brother Stone was waiting to drop Preston off, but Cliff wasn't home.  Because Stone's wife had just gone into labor and Cliff was 5 minutes away, he told Stone to just leave Preston alone.  Again, the boy is only 5.  What good parent does that?

Despite these things, I did enjoy the book and will most likely read more of the books in the series.

This review was originally posted on Among the Reads