A Bite’s Tale (A Furry Fable) – It leaves you wanting more!

A Bite’s Tale (A Furry Fable) is aptly named. This delightful novella provides a supernatural take on the age old Cinderella story. Cydney, the “Cinderella”, is a werewolf while the prince is a vampire.

We meet the characters while they are  in their early teens. Neither one is willing to admit who they really are, but they secretly meet each other every summer until one year when Cydney’s wolf loses control, leaving the prince to fight for his life. We soon experience a time skip where we see Cydney at seventeen, continuing to battle the nature of her inner wolf and manage the guilt of hurting, or possibly killing her secret sweetheart.

Unbeknownst to Cydney, he was changed into a vampire to save his life.  All is well, but of course as a prince he has a huge responsibility to his country and he must choose a wife to help him rule. The king schedules a ball for the prince to choose a fitting lady, but he can’t forget his “Cinderella”. Will fate allow these two to cross paths once again? Will they have to put their species first since vampires and werewolves are enemies?

Veronica Blade’s novella is an extremely satisfying read. I was genuinely surprised. Even better, if you’re an Amazon Prime member the book is free to borrow.  That made the read just that much sweeter for me. Though I must admit I try to imagine the prince with a different hair style in my mind because the one on the cover is a total buzz kill.

I liked having an old tale to compare this to. It made me appreciate the subtle changes. While I never doubted Cinderella’s love for her prince in the cartoon, sometimes for this one I merely wondered if it was due to teenage hormones. Also, sometimes it felt more like Romeo & Juliet than Cinderella. This had a lot of coming-of-age elements. There is a little action but not a whole lot. That was fine with me because I didn’t pick the book up for that reason.

This is a fun, quick read and a nice change of pace from the norm. I would like to see a full fleshed out novel with these characters because there’s room for the story to expand.