Sandy M’s review of The Werewolf Upstairs by Ashlyn Chase
Paranormal Romance published by Sourcebooks Casablanca 1 Feb 11

I had high hopes for this book, one that combines my two favorite elements in romance – the paranormal and humor. It works quite well as far as the paranormal, but it’s the humor that doesn’t keep pace and is lacking a bit. Thus, while I do like the characters and the storyline, I only had a smile or two to give the humorous side of it all and not a full-out chuckle that I pinned my hopes on.

Roz has moved into her best friend’s former apartment, worried about her friend and wanting to be close to her since wedding the love of her life – a man who can shift into a wolf or so says her friend. There she meets a variety of bizarre characters, thought she doesn’t know the half of it. She just thinks a few of them are off the wall, has no idea they possess paranormal powers. Eventually meeting Konrad, Roz becomes a tad smitten right off the bat, taken with his smile, his good looks, and that wonderfully buff bod. She can only hope he’s on the up and up and not like the dregs she always represents in her job as a public defender.

After enjoying time in Konrad’s company, Roz is not sure she should hope for more, but that’s difficult because he’s like a dream come true the way he treats her when he barely knows her. His feelings are the real deal, though; Konrad even goes so far to think Roz might be his mate and he wants to see more of her to find out for sure. In the meantime, however, his “job” goes awry when he’s caught red-handed moving a display case outside a store to push the owner into buying an alarm system – from the company his cousin owns. This should have been his last job, but nothing goes right. Of course, when he meets his attorney the next day, Konrad is as surprised as Roz when they come face to face at the jail.

Roz tries to give Konrad the benefit of the doubt – because who in the world would believe the so-called witness and the police report detailing the man lifting what amounts to tons of weight. Totally impossible. So she vows to get Konrad off and they spend even more time together. Little by little Roz learns about Konrad and all the residents in their building, and she becomes a believer in the supernatural. The book along these lines is just fine. What didn’t work for me is the humor that’s woven in and about these characters as they go through their days. Most of the goings-on are more of a silly nature rather than outright humorous. Maybe I just wasn’t in a silly mood the couple of days it took me to read the book.

An example of that silliness is Konrad and Roz agree to head home to talk over their new-found way of communicating, they banter back and forth for a minute, which leads Konrad to pick Roz up and throw her over his shoulder to carry her home when she playfully accuses him of being a caveman. He decides to act like one.  This is the conversation following:

Roz thumped him on the back. “Put me down this minute!”

“Just relax and enjoy the ride.”

“I don’t usually hear that until I make it to the bedroom.”

Konrad laughed but ignored her plea and strode off in the direction of their building as if she weighed no more than a sack of tennis balls. He added to her embarrassment by whistling.

“Oh, very nice. What if I have to fart while I’m up here?”

“Then fart. We’re traveling downwind.”

And it goes on from there in the same vein. I just can’t see a woman – an attorney, no less – saying something like this to a man she’s just met, even if she is attracted to him. Just before this she argues with him about him carrying her because she believes she weighs too much. That I can believe a woman would say. But most women wouldn’t use the word fart and in this way, she’s too busy trying to hold it in if one is imminent. That’s embarrassing to actually let one loose.

There is a side story surrounding a years-old  heist at a local museum where the only remaining witness is the resident ghost, and one of the witches Roz has befriended is using her skills as a medium to interview said ghost to solve the crime and collect a huge reward. This part of the story really didn’t do much for me; it feels as though it’s there only to cause havoc in Konrad and Roz’s life later on. There’s also a ghost in the apartment building who ends up going to the museum to talk ghost to ghost when that apparition becomes non-cooperative, and after a while things just seem to get bogged down with so much going.

The dialogue at times reads like info dumps and is stiff and awkward. Roz sounds more like a man than Konrad when she speaks, using “fuck” just as much or more than he does. When Konrad proposes, he messes it up a bit and what he gets for that is a kick in the balls. Huh? The comedy of that scene flew right by me. There’s a couple of inconsistencies here and there, but after some of this other stuff, it didn’t make much difference to me by that point. Most of the secondary characters are okay, quirky in their own way, but I could have done without Dottie, the super of the building. Very annoying woman.

But if you enjoy this type of humor in your books and your movies, you’ll more than likely like this book better than I do. I do still like Roz and Konrad, despite some of the things they say and do that I don’t like. All of these little things minimize other parts of the story – I now don’t remember the few shifting scenes when Konrad is in wolf form, and those are scenes I always enjoy most when reading about shifters. Not knowing if the other related books are written in this same vein, I’m amenable to trying another sometime just to see how it goes.

Grade: C-

Summary:

Petty crime never looked so good…

Alpha werewolf Konrad Wolfensen sees it as his duty to protect the citizens of Boston, even if it means breaking into their businesses just to prove their security systems don’t work. But when his unsolicited services land him in trouble with the law, he’ll have to turn to his sexy new neighbor for help.

She should know better…

Attorney Roz Wells is bored. She used to have such a knack for attracting the weird and unexpected, but ever since she took a job as a Boston public defender, the quirky quotient in her life has taken a serious hit. Until her sexy werewolf neighbor starts coming around…

No excerpt available.

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