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Dancing with Werewolves
1st book in the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator series
by Carole Nelson Douglas

At the dawn of the new millennium everyone was concerned with the threat of Y2K. Instead of computers crashing worldwide however, vampires and other so-called mythical creatures stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight. During this time, Delilah was growing up in the custody of the state. She was found as an infant and was named after the street she was found on – Delilah. Mystery is, there are no “Delilah” streets in Wichita. Her pale skin attracts vampires like a magnet and Delilah spent most of her traumatizing childhood trying to avoid becoming someone’s dinner.

Now, years later Delilah is an investigative reporter working the paranormal beat on the television station, WTCH TV, in Wichita, KS. She has a Lhasa Apso named Achilles, is dating the vampire anchorman of her television station. In short, all is going well for her – not!

Her life in Wichita begins to go belly up one evening after she tunes in to a new episode of CSI and sees her naked [dead] body lying on a cadaver table and being autopsied. The body is identical to hers down to her nose stud and painted toenails. All to freaky. Later that evening her vampire boyfriend rigs the flowers he gives her with razor blade-thorns in order to get a taste of her blood. Her faithful dog Achilles runs him out after delivering a swift bite to the ankle. Just when it seems as though things can’t get any worse, they do. Turns out her boyfriend was seeing the station’s weather witch on the sly. Her paranormal beat is taken away and she’s bumped to social hum-drum reporting, her dog dies due to being poisoned by the vampire’s blood, and the weather witch decides dropping a tornado on Delilah’s house is fun.

It’s spur of the moment, but Delilah decides that since she wants to know what’s up with her body double anyway, why not pack what remains into her vintage car and head on over to Las Vegas, Nevada. Sin City, home of CineSim productions and Nightwine. She wants answers and Las Vegas has them. And this is where things just become hectic to follow. Delilah’s obsession with everything vintage has her making off the wall comments that reference anything and everything that can be considered vintage. This often leads to Delilah’s commentary and inner-monologue running off on unrelated tangents that left me wondering why we were at point X when we should be at point B.

Werewolves basically own and run Las Vegas, and given the title of the book, I knew that werewolves were going to play an integral part in the plot. And hey, since we have witches and vampires, why not werewolves? However we also suddenly have to contend with the existence of zombies, faeries, and whatever the heck Nightwine and Delilah are. Because folks, despite what Delilah thought, she’s not human and neither is Nightwine; a loose end the author has left dangling for us readers. The author’s initial description of this post-Y2K world leads us to believe that only vampires, witches, and werewolves (on account of the book’s title) exist. Yet there is more out there and they just pop out at the author’s whim. The author never truly establishes ground rules for the supernatural beings that exist and the forces that drive this world. This suspends the believability of the author’s world, and coupled with the disjointed narrative, makes for a jarring and headache-filled read.

To add to the unbelievability, after spending the entire novel harping on Delilah’s unknown origins, her lousy childhood, and her quest for answers, Delilah just gives up on the search for her twin. I have a very hard time believing that an orphan, who never got adopted out of the system, who has no friends or social life, and who has always questioned her origins, would just give up the search for a possible sibling in the face of a romantic interest. A romantic interest who doesn’t even get much “screen time” so to speak.

I picked this book up because it had supernatural elements and a strong female character. Now, while Delilah is an enjoyable character and is indeed every bit the strong character I thought she would be, the disjointed writing detracts from the story greatly. The author’s attempts at being witty and sarcastic begin to fall flat as the tangents pile up, and eventually, completely confound the reader. For example, at one point Delilah mentions an “inner-girlfriend” and initially I honestly couldn’t tell if she was trying to be witty or serious. That is very sad. I thought this series had a great deal of potential, but the aforementioned problems will likely keep me from pursuing this series any further.

In the end it was as if nothing was solved. Dangling ends abound, and while I understand that it’s important to keep some avenues open for a sequel, leaving all of the major avenues unexplored makes a reader question why they even bothered reading the book to begin with. This, coupled with the fact that Delilah’s inner-monologue and narration was disjointed and confusing for the most part, left me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth, come the conclusion of the book. Where was the book that I read all the rave reviews about on Amazon? It certainly wasn’t Dancing with Werewolves by Carole Nelson Douglas, that’s for sure.

Joana’s Rating: (2 out of 5 stars)