Even Kristen Ashley’s biggest fans have to admit – most of her novels, while engrossing and entertaining, often have issues. Most of the issues, spelling, weird punctuation, and the like, are correctable and easily read around. In the case of With Everything I Am, there is one huge, glaring issue that I found to be much less easily forgiven.

The heroine is Sonia, a woman with a sad past and secret abilities that are a heavy burden. She has always had an affinity with wild animals, super hearing and sight, and a sixth sense that gives her hyper-awareness of her surroundings. Before their deaths when she was a young child, Sonia’s parents taught her that her gifts must be kept secret, and the effort to seem normal, even to her adopted family, has caused Sonia to live in semi-isolation. She lives quietly until a seemingly inexplicable attack changes her life forever.

Callum, the werewolf king, has known that Sonia is his mate and queen since the night she saved him, in wolf form, from hunters, when Sonia was only five years old. Callum waits decades for Sonia to mature, planning to eventually court her as a human male would, until word of the planned attack against his future queen causes him to change all his plans. He arrives in the nick of time and spirits Sonia away to one of his homes, the cabin in the woods that once belonged to Sonia’s parents (which she has always considered her true home).

Callum and Sonia have a rocky beginning. At first she believes that Callum has kidnapped her for ransom, after staging a bogus attack from which he “saved” her in order to ingratiate himself. When Sonia finally begins to trust Callum, he still has to deal with her humanity, instead of claiming her the werewolf way, which involves mainly leaping upon one’s mate and banging her brains out. He manages to control himself, even though Callum is impatient to get out of the woods and start making war against the rebel group that targeted Sonia. A tentative relationship is barely begun before an overheard conversation causes Sonia to mistrust Callum again.

A host of misunderstandings and hurt feelings follow, mostly Sonia hearing things she shouldn’t via her special ability, and seeing things she doesn’t get because she doesn’t know she’s dealing with werewolves. These misunderstandings stymie her integration into Callum’s life, and Callum remains unaware because Sonia allows the hurt to fester instead of discussing things with him. Another difficulty rests in Callum’s inability to confess his true nature to Sonia. At first he keeps his lycanthropy a secret in order to gain her trust, but then he waits too long and his secret becomes painful deceit.

But this book isn’t all about deceit and misunderstandings. There’s quite a nice romance here, a story about a lonely woman finding acceptance within her lover’s boisterous extended family, learning to live with her intense husband, and coming to terms with her own reality. Ms. Ashley excels at description, and you hardly need an imagination to picture Sonia’s new environment, Callum’s isolated castle and village, and even Sonia’s store, called Clear because everything in it is transparent, silver or white. Another area in which the author excels is in fleshing out the secondary characters. Callum’s family and retainers, Sonia’s adoptive family, and even her store assistants are all vividly drawn with personality and are important to the story.

The intimacies between the two main characters are simply delicious. The love scenes are inventive and hot, but by “intimacies” I mean the quiet times when they’re not making love. Callum is a nuzzler and a cuddler and he constantly marks Sonia by rubbing his temple against her hair. Sonia’s previous existence, after the death of her parents, was devoid of physical affection, so being close with Callum is intensely comforting to her, which makes for very pleasurable reading.

The one huge drawback is the mystery/secret that is, in fact, neither. Sonia has a blood disease that requires that she take an injection every day that causes her intense pain. Giving Sonia the injection is hideous for Callum, as well. This action, which is the basis for many scenes in the book, continues for far longer than it should (at least to this reader), and the big revelation regarding it is transparent from the get-go. And frankly, I found the explanation about Sonia’s disease stupid. There’s an obvious conspiracy and the perpetrators are cruel to let it go on as long as they did. It’s always frustrating to the reader when the main characters are blind to something that should be obvious. That the entire book centered around this quite spoiled it for me.

As the second book in a trilogy, With Everything I Am successfully did its part in carrying the story through to the third installment. The characters from the much better first book in the series are present in this one and we learn a little more about the next book’s protagonists. As filler I suppose this book is okay, but I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise, and certainly not to a first time Ashley reader.