August Book Club Blog: Before the Bond

Before the Bond (Bound by Blood Book 1), by Lily S. Moon is a good book. A really good book. It is by far the best book I have read this year, and... it's about werewolves.

Olivia is a woman on the run. She is a travelling nurse who takes short term contracts and leaves a go bag packed at the front door. When she arrives in Greyhollow, a man runs out of the woods and dies on her lawn. She administers CPR and brings him back, but inside her head she is running a clinical diagnosis of his symptoms, and they aren't adding up. He revives, but instead of staying put like a good patient should, he runs off back into the woods. Also, the prints he leaves behind seem more animal than human.

Olivia is confused, but for a woman always running, she isn't panicked. Instead, she feels some strange thread tugging her towards the man. When her temp agency lets her know the Ashford family has an in-house patient situation that pays obscenely well and requires discretion, she takes the job. There, she meets Caleb Ashford, and eventually, he admits that he and the entire family are wolves.

He says it that way. They are wolves, not werewolves, which somehow gives primacy to that side of their nature. Yet, this book is not like other books about werewolves, where we see the characters in their wolf form frequently, and see their wolf behaviour. Most werewolf books I have encountered are fast-movement, adrenaline-fueled, easy-reading entertainment. it's summer, so that's kind of what I was looking for, and it's definitely what I was expecting when I downloaded this book to my kindle.

This book is none of that. Yes, the Ashfords are at war with a rival werewolf family and the bond she shares with Caleb puts her in danger from the Voss. There is a climactic battle scene that goes in the Ashfords' favour. However, there is so much internal drama unfolding in the two main characters in this book that any external danger is a very distant part of the story.

Caleb is determined never to force the bond on Olivia since his father forced it onto his mother. Yet, in his own way, he repeats the mistakes of the past. Olivia has locked so many doors in her life in an effort to prioritize her physical safety, that when she finds a home, she almost doesn't recognize it, then briefly, at least, rejects it. These characters are in their heads and evolving a lot in this book.

This book is stylistically magnificent, which is what takes a fairly basic plot and turns this into the first book that has made me cry in forever. It is written in dual first person point of view, but it reads like anything but first person pov. It took me a long time to figure out why that is, but I think it is because the book is presented in narrative voice, and both characters are quite reflexive in their narrating. First person is often fast-paced and a bit in your face. You know everything the characters are thinking and feeling and doing, and you know it now. Not so in Before the Bond. The tone from these characters is much more deliberative. We hear from their point of view, but it's almost like we hear what they know, then we hear what they think about what they now know.

The style makes the book quieter, deeper. It is laced with profound insights as the characters discover truths about themselves and about life. Lines like, "The honesty sat between us, ugly and useful, until her face changed," and, "Two things were true at once, and I made myself hold both," are just examples of the way the author wove deep truths into the themes of this novel with a poignancy and beauty to the writing that it was impossible not to notice.

To be honest, at times, I loved the way the book was written, and at other times it was... distracting. I think that is the best word. The book is compelling, but it is not an easy book to read. It makes you work for it. Then that work captivates you and makes you want to know more.

Before the Bond is a short novel at only 224 pages, and I read it in a little over a day. It mellowed out into a golden glow with a happy ending that felt really perfectly staged by the author and captured by the characters. I left feeling a bit awestruck, and not at all sure I could have written this story. I can only say I highly recommend reading Before the Bond, and now I'm off to buy Before the Bite, the next book in the series.