Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Blue Moon, by Lori Handerland

I'd heard Lori Handerland's name mentioned alongside other authors & books that I like for a while, so when I found it in a second-hand shop the other week, I decided to give it a go.
Told by Jessie, a police officer, the story begins when a wolf is hit in a car accident. Things quickly spiral out of Jessie's control from there, with a specialist called in to deal with the town's 'wolf problem', and Jessie is forced to realise that werewolves exist. Thrown into the mix is Will Cadotte, a man who Jessie first meets when he's totally naked, supposedly practising his tai chi outside his cabin. Throughout the book Jessie is torn between wanting him and suspecting him, and makes for interesting guessing as to where they will end up.

For me, as soon as I got to the wolf being hit with the car, I was thinking werewolves, given the back of the book, and the kind of books I'd heard it compared with. Then when we met Will, I was just as quick jumping to some conclusions, and it was interesting seeing how wrong they turned out to be. The werewolves are certainly not the good guys in this novel, not in any way, shape, or form. I guess that's one of the things making me mark this book down in it's star rating - I prefer to have at least a couple of the supernatural beasties being on the same side as the main characters. While it was an interesting change to see them like this, it just didn't do it for me.
Something in it's favour, though, was the number of twists and turns. It was constantly surprising me, which is very good - sometimes in these kinds of books it's often not too difficult to guess where things are going, and Ms Handerland managed to conceal her chief trouble maker really well.
Overall, I'm giving this a 6-7. I enjoyed it, but I'm kind of relieved that I got it cheap, and unlike most of my books, I won't mind setting this one back out into the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Tell us what you think! Your comments feed the blog :-)