Unleashed by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie

Unleashed by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie
Published: 8th December 2011
By: Doubleday Children's Books
Source: Library

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up Unleashed purely because of it's werewolf theme. It had quite the mixed bag of reviews so I wasn't too sure what to expect going into it, but while not perfect, I did really enjoy it.

After Katelyn's mother, her only living parent, is killed in an earthquake which destroys their home in LA, Katelyn has to move to live with her grandfather in the small town of Wolf Springs. Katelyn dreams of being a dancer and feels there is a lot more chance of fulfilling her dream in LA, so she's really not happy about the move.

Her grandfather lives in a cabin in the forest, in the middle of nowhere and has dead animal heads all over the walls. Animals that he hunted and killed himself. This leaves Katelyn totally creeped out.

But there seems to be one bright light on the horizon, in the hot form of Trick, who's around her own age, but yet seems to be friends with her grandpa. It turns out, he's to be her ride to and from school.

At school, she makes friends with Cordelia, but when she meets her new friends family, they are extremely weird, except it seems, for her totally gorgeous cousin Justin, who Katelyn just seems to be drawn to kissing.

Katelyn is forbidden to be out in the woods at night and with two girls having been attacked and killed, and herself and Trick almost being attacked by a wolf, she can understand why. So, when she's driving home from a party alone one night, and gets a puncture, she's extremely scared, and then it happens.

Maybe, being such a werewolf fan, I'm a bit biased but I thought this was a really good story. Although, I did feel it slumped a little in the middle and some of the characters could have been more defined, but it didn't take from my overall enjoyment.

It did however, stop me from really gelling with Trick or Justin, so even with the hint of a love triangle, I didn't have a favourite to be rooting for. I didn't find myself swooning over either of them and someone swoonworthy always spices up my reads.

There's a lot of mystery in this book. I did kind of guess at who the werewolves were, but I feel that was only a drop in the ocean as to what's going to come in this series. A lot of these mysteries were still unsolved at the end of the book. Katelyn is trying to make a transition and it's scary and dangerous. It appears that there may be an unknown monster in the woods.

A great first in a series that I'm looking forward to continuing.

Buy the book: Amazon/The Book Depository