Review first posted on http://rubysreads.com.[return][return]I had high hopes for this book. I mean, a new YA werewolf series? By an author who already has a pretty big following? I hoped wrong. And I m going to have to tread lightly here, because there wasn t much for me to like in Once in a Full Moon and I just talked about not author-bashing in a previous post.[return][return]Let s start with the writing. It s a lot of tell and no show. We re told a lot of things about the heroine, Celeste, and Celeste s friends, and Celeste s boyfriends, the town of Legend s Run and the hot new guy, Brandon. By the time I got to the part where I started reading sentences like, Another attribute that my friends shared was accusing me of being too nice because I was cordial to everyone , I began to realize that I was doomed. There s also the stilted dialog which is often lacking in contractions. This is a pet peeve of mine. I mean, people do not talk the way they write. They re constantly doing blasphemous things to the English language. I like to see a nice balance between formal language and something that s readable. If the dialog is too formal I can t picture actual people saying the words. If it s too slang-y and missing too many consonants (see dialog written in dialect. Heh.) then I become irritated.[return][return]Okay, sorry, that was a diatribe I didn t mean to go off on. So, the writing: not great. But what really disappointed me was everything else. The main character, Celeste, is a cardboard cutout of the good girl that runs with the popular crowd. For some reason, she s accepted by all the rich, born-on-the-right-side-of-the-tracks kids at her high school. Her boyfriend is a good-looking, popular jock. Her friends are steadfast and loyal. She s nice , meaning she sticks up for the poor unfortunates who are born in the Hicksville east side of Legend s Run. The blue collar side. And, seriously, I m not joking: she volunteers at a senior center. She is, in essence, a Mary Sue.[return][return]Or she would be, if she didn t have issues. Like being friends with the kind of mean girls who exclude people not of their own socio-economic background. I mean, seriously, her friends suck. They re rude to everyone. They tell Celeste that she s too nice and then encourage her to forgive her boyfriend when she finds him flirting with another girl. They make Celeste worse just because she wanted to be friends with them.[return][return]Then there s Celeste s boyfriend, Nash. Also a jerk. Basically ignores Celeste and only cares about sports. He likes Celeste because she s different . She s the one girl he can t get just by crooking his finger. Can you see me rolling my eyes? I honestly could not figure out why Nash was supposed to be so popular. Maybe you can tell me. Luckily, Nash isn t the hero in this book. No, that s the aforementioned new guy in town: Brandon.[return][return]Brandon is hot, but he s from the wrong side of town. No, seriously. He s, like, hawt. What I couldn t figure out was, if he s so hot, isn t it pretty unlikely that Celeste would be the only girl who didn t care what part of town he was from? Apparently, no. He s reviled. Even though he s a hero. What, you didn t know that? Well, Celeste will tell you a few thousand times, just so you get the point. He s sexy, heroic and thoughtful. Everything Nash is not, apparently. Which is fine. I mean, I ll buy the story of a girl who is with Guy A, who doesn t appreciate her or treat her right and she doesn t realize it until Guy B comes into the picture. The problem is the thing that s keeping Celeste with Nash isn t the way he s treating her. It s worry over what her friends and family will think if they find out she s dating an Eastsider like Brandon. So Celeste stays with Nash despite her feelings for another guy. At least, until she finds him flirting with someone else.[return][return]All in all, I don t feel that I can recommend this book. It didn t just disappoint me, it frustrated me. When the penultimate werewolf scene finally happens, I actually laughed out loud. I m only sad that I couldn t laugh at the rest of it.