Claimed

3.5 stars.

Intro
After reading The Thief I thought I was done with the series. I was fed up with all the nonsense drama going on with established couples. I was frustrated to see that newly introduced characters were just recycled ones. To me, Sola was a copy of Xhex and Assail of Rehv. In addition, I was frustrated with the lack of solid story arcs in the most recent volumes. I was left wondering, Where were the big bad Omega and Lessening Society? Why the conflict was “seemingly paused”, meaning that we got little or nothing going on? I considered the series reaching a stagnation point, with no sign of which direction we were going. When I read the plot of Claimed, though, I found myself to be very interested in the premise: werewolves? yes, please! the main character who wants to protect wolves? Yes! Wolves being endangered by humans? Yes! I studied environmental protection and I love animals. That's probably why this premise sounded awesome to me. Aaand here I am back on the BDB train, with the desire of catching up with the series. However, I would love that we could just get a single BDB multi-POV series, instead of spin-off here and there, since some of the events happening in one spin-off book are relevant for other spin-offs (it seems that the concept of wolven was already mentioned in The Jackal) or for the main series, and vice versa.

Plot: two story arcs
In this volume, we have two arcs. One is from the POVs of Lydia and Daniel, making up around 80-85% of the whole book, and a minor one is from the point of view of Xhex.
The main plot was mainly focused on the investigation carried out by Lydia and Daniel, to figure out who was poisoning the wolves. The romance between them develops slowly and is very sweet, especially if compared with other PNR series (Immortals after dark, for example) or the first books of the series. This is an aspect that I really liked. I am fed up with the “predestined mate” thing, sex from the first page, everything revolves around sex or sexual desire, with no world depth nor interesting plot left.
However, much information is still left unknown. I guess and I hope the second book will again involve Lydia and Daniel, but here we get the revelations at 80-90% with no further explanation of how this came or if the character even knew about it. I will give you an example here but it's a major spoiler, so please, click on it at your own risk. Lydia is the werewolf (I actually thought since the beginning it was Daniel, so that was unexpected). Lydia asks for help from her grandpa. She kinda sees his spirit. Then, she goes saving Daniel as a wolf, and as she got shot she transformed back to a woman. That's it. No further explanation if she knew about it or if, how and when she got transformed into a hybrid or if she was born like that. Also no subsequent conversation about it with Daniel. I am a person who needs to know all the whys of what is written in a book. For some whys, I can be patient and wait to get the answers throughout the series, but for the ones that are related to a key revelation, I am not ok that they are left out. I wished it would have more depth through explanations and flashbacks and that several nonnecessary conversations would have been cut out. The plot felt pretty static probably due to the investigation. I have the same feeling with each book dealing with some investigation. Probably because there is little action.
The minor story arc is pretty vague. Xhex just escaped from some experimentation lab, something that was likely explained in a previous book and I missed something here, but this doesn't affect my rating because it's my fault. We also see some of the other Brothers, especially V and JM, and her brother Blade. Btw, I don't remember him. where did he show up first? I must have missed something here as well. Without entering in details or spoilers, what happened here is pretty is pretty vague. She goes to the Colony and meets with her brother. She also hears a whispering voice in the woods, saying that she has to do something otherwise she will die. Huh? Again, no real explanation of what was going on or who was talking. I hope we'll get more information in the next book. This thread loosely crosses the main one, through Blade and Daniel, but again how they know each is a mystery left unknown.

Characters
Both main characters are well characterized. I loved Lydia from the first page. She's very empathetic and caring. I could not connect very much to Daniel probably due to his cover (?). I also enjoyed to see the other Brothers through Xhex' eyes. It gave me a positive of feeling of connection to the series and, as I said, I would not mind if all these spin-offs would actually become just part of one solid bigger story arc.

Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed this book and made me want to go back to one of my beloved series. I liked that more focus was given on the investigation rather than the romance. What made this lower rating are the holes with lack of explanations for big revelations, the not-so-sympathetic character of Daniel, the static plot, and the cliffhanger, that left me with the feeling that this book was inconcluded. As if the author was writing and a black-out occured. It could have been structured in a way to convey more depth to the world and its events and leave out nonnecessary details of sex scenes and superficial conversations between Lydia and Candy.

 Not so much a romance as a mystery, as it turns out. Not a BAD mystery, to be fair, since I didn't see the twist coming, even though there were plenty of hints leading up to it. Part of it might be that my expectations going into this weren't quite the same? Was expecting more romance, I guess. And I know lots of readers were unhappy with the cliffhanger, but I thought it wasn't so bad. I've read worse cliffhangers; at least this one isn't very jarring.

Anyway, this is really more a worldbuilding book than a romance. It's necessary, given that it's setting the groundwork for the existence of an entirely new race within the larger Black Dagger Brotherhood setting, but the romance could've done with some more tweaking.