Book of the Month: Six Moon Summer

This is my final book of the month before it’ll be done for the year.  Next month there will be voting for the best one of the bunch, but more on that later.  This month I chose Six Summer Moon by SM Reine because it was short and has been sitting on my kindle for about a year now.  It’s about werewolves, one of my favorite supernatural creatures, if you didn’t know, and is the first in a series of four (although there is a spin-off novella-ish series, too).

Rylie's been bitten.

She's changing.

And now she has three months to find a cure before becoming a werewolf... forever.

Rylie Gresham hates everything about summer camp: the food, the fresh air, the dumb activities, and the other girls in her cabin. But the worst part is probably being bitten by a werewolf. Being a teenager is hard enough, but now she's craving raw flesh and struggles with uncontrollable anger. If she doesn't figure out a way to stop the transformation, then at the end of summer, her life is worse than over. She'll be a monster.

The book takes place over about three months and rushes straight through those days, taking time only for the important plot points.  Little is given to background story and side characters, making a simple, linear story that is pretty flimsy if you want something to dig into.  As it was, I was hoping for a quick read and that’s exactly what I got.  The ending, though, was amazing!  I would give the ending alone five stars because of the action, romance, and just plain flash-bang excitement of it all!  This pinnacle of story telling proves that Reine really does have a gift with the pen.  This ending was so worth it that I can’t wait to start the next one.

Rylie changes as the book progresses.  She actually realizes and puts it best when she says something along the lines of “I was no longer the whiny girl at the beginning of summer”.  It’s true.  She was whiny, a little annoying, but as she goes through her six moons in the story she grows stronger, braver, and just an all around better person.  The moons aren’t the only things that have this effect on her either, nor her love of Seth, but I’m not going to spoil the shocker for you.  It actually had me gasp out loud, that’s how out of the blue it comes.  Did I mention Seth yet?  He’s pretty swoon worthy after you get to know him, although it’s pretty obvious right away that he’s not who he says he is.  That’s a flaw for pretty much all of the characters, really.  The final two chapters are told from his point of view and that was pretty awesome.  I honestly think he’s a stronger narrator than Rylie, and it looks like in the next book it’ll be split up between them.  Now, onto villains!  There’s a bad were-wolf and an evil camp counselor, Jericho.  Really pretty basic, but they’re pretty see-through and the mystery is killed pretty much from the get-go.  Trust me when I say, guessing who the bad were-wolf is isn’t hard.

Overall, I’m giving this book a 3 and a half out of five stars, and I’m looking forward to watching the series go up from here.

PS

Sorry this review was up so late things just got away from me.  NaNoWriMo, work, school, football (finally over) and reading in general have stolen all of my time.