The Accidental Friends by D. Cassidy

I finally got my hands on Dakota Cassidy’s Accidental Friends series – The Accidental Werewolf, Accidentally Dead and The Accidental Human – and instead of doing a review for each one, I’m going to do one big one. So, without further ado…

When Marty Andrews gets bitten by a mangy mutt while walking her teacup poodle, her blond hair darkens, the hair on her legs starts growing at an alarming rate, and her mood swings put her dream job as a sales rep for Bobbie- Sue Cosmetics in serious jeopardy.

Then a drool-worthy man shows up at her door claiming that he accidentally bit Marty. And since he’s a werewolf, she is now, too. Thinking Keegan Flaherty is clearly insane, Marty refuses to believe a word until a kidnapping makes her realize there’s more at stake than just her highlights. And she must put her out-of-control life in the hands of the man who makes her blood run wild in more ways than one…

The Accidental Werewolf will be a hit with any die hard romance lovers. It has your wronged heroine, a gorgeous guy who is clueless about girls and the rejected wannabe lover who plays dirty.  Honestly, when Alana first entered the scene, the premise of the novel just clicked with a lot of romances I’ve read in the past, but this time we’re given a great mix of comedy and romance all in a paranormal setting.  While the idea wasn’t new to me, the spin was and it worked great.

The only thing that really bugged me was Marty’s incessant chatter.  Okay, I get that you want your character to be chatty, but there has to be better ways to do it.  I mean, Marty would ramble on, making the dialogs so long that my eyes would glaze over and I would start skipping parts of the conversation.  I don’t normally do that unless it’s one of those descriptive scenes that people get carried away with.

It’s a lousy first day on the job for Nina Blackman when a patient, loopy from the anesthesia, bites her. At least he was cute. But for real drama she can’t beat the next evening. Nina wakes up with a set of razor-sharp fangs, bionic vision, supersonic hearing, and a taste for blood. But there’s a good explanation: It’s her patient, Long Island vampire Greg Statleon. Actually they’re perfect for each other—if Nina’s willing to commit to one man for eternity.

Did anyone else notice that Nina’s reaction was pretty much the same as Marty’s in The Accidental Werewolf? She wants it fixed and she doesn’t want to hear anything else. The only real difference is Nina had an inkling of the paranormal going into her “bite” whereas Marty didn’t, so she didn’t have that week lag of not knowing what was going on.  It kind of felt like the beginning of The Accidental Werewolf, but with Nina instead and there’s just something about her character I’m not crazy about.  She just comes off as too much of a ghetto white chick or the stereotypical black girl and I have to be honest, she’s kind of obnoxious.

I do have to say that I liked Gregori.  He was a good balance for Nina, but seriously, what was with the same plot as The Accidental Werewolf showing up in Accidentally Dead?  Girl gets bitten by guy.  Girl gets turned into a paranormal.  Guy and Girl lust after each other, but really don’t like each other.  Sex happens, everything is good.  Whoops, the guy is suppose to mate with this other chick.  The premise was pretty much the same and if I hadn’t read these back to back, it might not have stood out as much, but it was still there.  The only  main difference is that Cassidy doesn’t focus too much on the other woman in Accidentally Dead, whereas she did with The Accidental Werewolf.  While that isn’t a bad thing, I would have liked to seen more of the other vampire (Lisanne).  Other than that, Accidentally Dead was still a good story and I did enjoy it, I just would have liked it if the plot had been little more different than The Accidental Werewolf.

Wanda Schwartz is raking in the dough selling Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics—and she’s a pro at recruiting new saleswomen. So, she’s shocked when a man comes to one of her in-home parties—a very hot man. Heath Jefferson is sure to put some extra spin into a lot of women’s color wheels.

When Wanda is diagnosed with a terminal illness, it doesn’t have to be a death sentence. With a werewolf and a vampire for best friends, she has options that most ordinary people wouldn’t. As Wanda ponders what to do about her mortality, Heath reveals he has secrets, and one of them is that his former bloodlust has turned into an old-fashioned lust—for Wanda. And he’s already given up too much to lose the love of his lifetimes.

Well….The Accidental Human was different than the first two, that’s for sure.  I kind of want to say that I enjoyed this one the most because the main idea was new.  I won’t give it away for those who haven’t read the series yet, but I haven’t come across the “accidental” human part in other stories involving the supernatural and I like how it worked.  It actually sucks for those it affects, but I like the twist Cassidy gave it.  While I was interested in the story and never wavered from it, I would have like to seen a little more action to the plot.  Compared to the first two, there was no action.  There wasn’t a blond who seemed to believe she “owned” the man; in fact, there wasn’t any kind of competitiveness at all.  Of the three books, this one most resembled a stereotypical romance novel and while it was a good break, it kind of seemed slow in areas.  However, I probably cried the most through this one, although I fully believe it’s because I’m super hyper overemotional right now.

Overall, the series was good; it was a nice side trip with something a little lighter and not super intense.  There were a few things I didn’t like, which is primarily why its losing a spot on the keeper shelf, but I would recommend them to others to read.  Each novel tells a different story and while the stories could be read as stand alones; reading them in order makes them a lot richer.  Although, I will say that its kind of amusing that I was reading a story about three girls who met because one recruited the other two to a direct marketing sales company when I’m doing that right now.  However, I’m not doing makeup (god no!), but the PC.

Read Order:
The Accidental Werewolf
Accidentally Dead
The Accidental Human
Accidentally Demonic (2010)