Ellen Schreiber has devoted her last several books to making goths and vampires as ANNOYING as possible. 
 So I was dreading the worst when she decided to take on werewolves in "Once In A New Moon." Well, it's not as bad as it could have been -- Schreiber makes a good-faith effort to make a high-school werewolf romance, but the characters are totally nondescript, the werewolf is NOT scary, and the plot is a poor pale emaciated thing. 
 Celeste has your average suburban life -- nice parents, snotty sister, a little circle of friends and a hot jock boyfriend she doesn't really love named Nash. Then a new boy named Brandon comes to school, from the "wrong side" of the town's tracks, and Celeste is predictably smitten. But she's been warned by a fortuneteller of an attack by wolves in the snow, and to "beware of a kiss under the full moon. It will change your life forever." 
 And sure enough, she's immediately attacked by wolves and rescued by Brandon. He's badly bitten by one of them, and after the two teens have their first kiss... he instantly turns into a hipster. I mean, a werewolf. This isn't much of a stumbling block for Celeste, but when the town is thrown into a panic by werewolf attacks, she begins to worry about what he might be doing. 
 "Once In A Full Moon" is probably Schneider's stab at a semi-serious urban fantasy novel -- no cutesy names, no obnoxiously selfish heroines, and a plotless Twilightesque I-love-you-but-we-can't-be-around-each-other romance. Unfortunately, it's still a pretty bland piece of work. 
 Even at her best, Schreiber's writing is pretty trite ("Stars glimmered like ten-carat diamonds"), the characterization is thin as a spiderweb, and there's no real PLOT at the center of this story. Something dramatic happens in the last quarter of the book, but it turns out to be kind of a letdown. Not to mention extremely unconvincing. 
 Also, what's the POINT of a werewolf who isn't scary or animalistic? All that happens to Brandon is that he turns into a hirsute hipster, complete with a GOATEE. What am I supposed to be afraid of, that he'll mock my taste in music? 
 As for Celeste, she isn't an annoying or selfish character like Schreiber's Raven... but she isn't anything else either. She's a completely average, bland "teen girl" character with no distinguishing flaws or virtues, and it's hard to see why all these boys are slobbering after her. Her friends might as well be paper dolls, and Nash is a pale photocopy of an "arrogant jock" character. 
 "Once in a Full Moon" is far better than Schreiber's vampire stories, but the limp, pallid plot and unscary werewolf leave it frozen. Don't bother kissing this wolf.