Published by St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books Genres: Fiction, Paranormal, young adult
Format: ARC, eBook
Creepy and thought provoking, Moonsick takes place when there is a worldwide werewolf epidemic! Everyone is aware of the existence of werewolves and how this epidemic can spread easily. Those who are infected will turn into, you guessed it, werewolves. They will then be hunted while the uninfected will do all that they can to avoid being infected such as having lockdown systems to keep werewolves out!
Heidi Mills is a high school student who plans to host a rager when she is home alone. The night before is a full moon and the while she is home alone, two intruders enter her home, and she is exposed to the virus! Yikes! But she will receive help from one of the intruders into her home as she confronts her new reality. What a reality it is!
Moonsick is a unique, original, and interesting take on werewolf genre and an interesting take on epidemics. Will COVID come to mind while reading this book? It did for me as well as a couple of epidemics that our world has faced. This book touches on themes of family, identity, fitting in, fear, survival, acceptance, and love. This book also felt like the haves vs. the have nots in terms of those infected vs. those who are not infected and trying to stay safe.
There were parts that I enjoyed and other parts that didn’t quite work as well for me. This is a YA book but still has a nice amount of horror, blood, and gore; but it is never over the top or excessive. The dialogue at times didn’t work for me – perhaps it will work better for the YA readers of this book.
I did enjoy the struggle that Heidi had. She wanted to hold onto her humanity while fighting the urges which come with being a werewolf. I thought this was done nicely. I also like how being infected, had her looking at her life and her choices, who she surrounded herself with, etc. She really does transform over the course of this book in more ways than one.
This book was just missing that little bit of something that would have pushed my rating higher. This is not a bad book by any means, as I mentioned there were parts that I thought were very well done. But there were other things such as dialogue in addition to t most of the characters that failed to resonate with me.
Others are enjoying this book more than I did, so please read their reviews of this unique and thought-provoking book!
