Nightshade review

author: Andrea Cremer
published: October 19^th 2010

Calla is a 17 year old werewolf. And she is also the alpha of her pack. She has always known her destiny; finish high school, marry the man the keepers, her bosses, has picked for her and lead her pack. And Calla is more than willing to follow these rules, since that's what every werewolf for many generations has been doing without complaining. And if she for some reason would obey, death is what will be waiting for her. But one day, when the human boy Shay Daren moves into town, everything in Calla's world turns upside-down. Will she be able to follow her heart but at the same time, keep everyone she loves, and her pack, alive?

I was hooked from the very first page. This is the first time I’ve read a book were werewolves are the main characters. It was an interesting twist.

The characters seemed well organized, and I never felt that they blurred away, and started to act differently without any reason. Every character was special in their own way, which made it a lot easier to know who was who. Calla herself was a very strong character and you could almost always predict what she would say, or how she would react upon something. She seemed to be a really strong girl, being an alpha and all, but she was still a teenage girl and Andrea Cremer mixed it together beautifully. 

I give this book 3½ out of 5.

Although I really liked this book there were moment where Cremer had me go ‘wait, what?’ and it never really disappeared until she explained it like 100 pages later. Of course, there has to be some mystery in a book, but I don’t think it should be that much mystery and especially not to that point where you leave the reader all confused. But as I said before, you found out the answer later on. And I had some difficulties with Calla too. She was a strong character and all, but I think that Cremer might have exaggerated it a bit. Just a bit. But apart from that, the book was amazing!   

 

xoxo Lihini