“Dakota never disappoints!” MaryJanice Davidson, NYT bestselling author. Wooing a life mate can be hard enough for a wolf, wooing one while under the threat of a curse, even more so. After being drugged and captured by Animal Control, Max Adams is on Hoboken’s doggie death row when his life mate adopts him, takes him home, and promptly names him Fluffy. Wooing a mate while pretending to be her … Fluffy.
Wooing a mate while pretending to be her dog? Nearly impossible.
While JC, in all her new-pet-owner-ness, feeds “Fluffy” vile kibble, dresses him in mortifying dog couture, and schedules to have his manhood removed, Max’s human side gets to know JC. Especially in the biblical sense. Hopefully well enough to make her fall madly in love, mate with him under the full moon, and move with him to Cedar Glen to live happily-ever-after forever and ever amen. And fast.
Because the curse comes with a deadline…and the clock is ticking.
USA Today bestselling paranormal romantic comedy author Dakota Cassidy takes you on a laugh-out-loud roller-coaster ride from beginning to end, complete with werewolves, magic users, and shifters. Discover what happens when Max Adams, one strong alpha male, finds himself at the mercy of a woman who thinks he’s a big fluffy dog in An American Werewolf In Hoboken. Book 1 in the bestselling Wolf Mates series.
What readers are saying about An American Werewolf In Hoboken:
“Cute, Sassy, Funny”
“A barrel of fun!”
“Characters have great chemistry.”
*Not intended for readers under the age of 18. *Previously Published: (2014) Dakota Cassidy | (2006) Changeling Press.
Author Note:
Dear readers: Please note, this book, originally published in 2006 with a small e-press, has been updated, revised, expanded, and in general, beaten into a whole new submission. If some of my earliest readers recognize the general concept, I hope you’ll enjoy the new, expanded version of this series.
Books in the Wolf Mates series:
1. An American Werewolf In Hoboken
2. What’s New, Pussycat?
3. Gotta Have Faith
4. Moves Like Jagger
5. Bad Case of Loving You
more
With the men in her past, JC has a bad record so she sticks to her beauty shop in the city. Max is a werewolf under a curse to find his mate or face dying. After being tranquilized, he is put in the pound in his large scary dog form. JC adopts him in this form as a pet. She falls for him and brings him home; she bathes him and names him Fluffy. Max knows that JC is his mate, so he pretends to be Fluffy and her neighbor just so he can get to know her, but now he doesn’t know how he can tell her that she is his mate and he is her dog. The characters are great and the book is so funny you can’t put it down.
Review of audiobook version of humorous, paranormal romance
JC Jensen is a 32-year-old hairdresser who has lived in Hoboken, New Jersey all her life. She is something of a loner, with only her best friend, Vivienne Hathaway (“Viv”), whom she has known since they were both eight years old, as a consistent relationship in her life. Because she has had far too much lousy luck with men, she has put herself on indefinite hiatus from romance, and has decided to fill her companionship needs by going to the local shelter to adopt a rescue animal. Her initial idea is to get a cat, but she finds herself inexplicably drawn to a six-foot long, 135 lb, filthy, unneutered dog who looks like he is part wolf. Because he is on death row, scheduled to be killed within 24 hours, JC has no time to dither about her decision, so she follows her instincts and saves the scruffy beast. She ironically christens him with the moniker, Fluffy, and within hours of his being in her life, she forms an intense, attachment to him.
Little does JC know that Fluffy is actually a werewolf. Max Adams is 103 years old, looks 38 in his human form, and is cursed to die by paranormal means if he doesn’t mate with JC, his prophesied mate, by the next full moon, only four weeks away. It would be challenging enough to meet that deadline if the woman who is his destiny were a fellow werewolf, or even another type of shifter. But JC is 100% human and, worst of all, she obviously has no idea the paranormal world he is part of even exists.
The initial part of this novel, where Max is masquerading as JC’s pet dog, has many quite funny moments that I enjoyed a lot.
I was greatly surprised at how many detailed sex scenes there are in this book given the fact that the Witchless in Seattle series by this author is ostentatiously minus any sex at all. I don’t object to the sex scenes, because they are quite well written. I just had—fortunately, wrongly—assumed that DC is anti-sex in all her fiction.
This novel follows the classic tradition of adult romance fiction of offering the dual point of view of both the hero and heroine. As a long-time romance fan, I greatly appreciated that choice, because it allows the reader to deeply get to know and understand the romantic hero, and Max is a wonderful hero who is well worth knowing.
Unlike urban fantasy and mainstream-published paranormal romance, which tend to be heavy on action-adventure and can be counted on to offer comprehensive magical world-building, this book does not provide either of those things. Possibly because it is a very short novel of only about 45,000 words, compared to the 70,000-90,000 words of the typical mainstream-published UF or PNR. Those relatively few words do not leave much room for details about the magical world, especially when most of the story is taken up with humor and sex, with only a bit of adventure during the climax scenes at the very end of the story.
It is a tribute to the author’s writing skill that this paranormal novel is quite entertaining, in spite of its scanty world-building, mainly because JC, Max, his alter ego Fluffy, and the many colorful subcharacters are all quite engaging.
Romance readers who do not typically read UF or PNR will probably be adequately satisfied with the amount of magical details this book contains. As for me, personally, I’ve read quite a lot of UF and PNR over the years and, as a result, I had many questions I would have liked to have had answered, including the following:
1. It isn’t made clear how long werewolves live. We are told Max is 104 years old, but his grandparents don’t seem to be still alive, and it isn’t stated how or why they died.
2. I don’t understand why Max looks as if he is 38 years old instead of in his early 20’s, other than for the convenience of the author’s artistic preference as to the typical age of her heroines, which tends to always be around 32-33. If Max looks like he is in his early 20’s, as most ageless werewolves do in UF and PNR, he would probably look so young that JC would feel like she is robbing the cradle to be with him.
3. It is made quite clear that, in this magical universe, werewolves—unlike in UF and PNR—can procreate, which is not typically the case, given that their unavoidable shift into wolf form at the full moon is generally portrayed as causing a fetus to abort. It is also hinted in this story that werewolves can be created, but we are not informed as to how this occurs, and there is no epilogue to let us know if JC chooses to become a werewolf.
4. It isn’t made clear if the only way the werewolves in Max’s community support themselves is via the income provided by casual visitors who randomly pass through Max’s town. The only businesses mentioned that exist in the town are “quaint stores and kitschy eateries,” and there are purposely no accommodations of any kind, so that visitors won’t stick around.
5. Max’s pack has been living in a rural area in New Jersey for over 100 years. It is not explained why and how the werewolves have not long since hunted to extinction all the local wildlife.
6. I was surprised that Max’s wolf form is only 135 lbs, and that this is described incessantly throughout the book as “enormous.” To me, personally, “enormous” would be 170-200 lbs, given that werewolves in UF and most PNR are typically described as bigger than the biggest dogs and wolves on the planet, and the biggest known dogs are around 200 lbs (Great Dane and Neapolitan Mastiff), and the biggest wolves in the world are 175 lbs (Canadian Timber Wolf and Dire Wolf).
The narrator, Hollie Jackson, who also narrates the Witchless in Seattle series by this author, does a good job with male and female voices. Fortunately, the recording is not done by dual narrators, which I find extremely irritating, because every time a chapter is in the heroine’s point of view, the female narrator does all the male and female voices, including the hero. And every time a chapter is in the hero’s point of view, the male narrator does all the male and female voices, including the heroine. It’s like watching a movie where a male actor plays all the female parts, every other scene, and vice versa, which is very disorienting.
I rate this novel as follows:
Heroine: 4 stars
Hero: 5 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 4 stars
Humor: 5 stars
Paranormal World-building: 3 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Audiobook Narration: 4 stars
Overall: 4 stars
I loved it. It was light and funny reading. Original idea. Also read the one after, the whole series.