Moonglow

Gr 8 Up—This entry in the ever-growing body of paranormal YA novels adds little to the genre. In the prologue, readers learn that Dominy, on her 16th birthday, kills her best friend, Jess. The story then jumps back three months to the beginning of the mysterious changes in Dominy that led to this tragedy. Plot development is slow, and the characters do not grow over the course of the novel; what should be a page-turner is actually hard to slog through. The stilted writing has an excessive amount of description that doesn't add to the story, which is far too long. Dominy, who has just found out that she is a werewolf, is not the sympathetic protagonist she needs to be for the plot to work, and readers have no true sense that it's her transformation into a violent creature that is causing her lack of emotional control and personality issues. It's not just Dominy, though; all of the characters are two-dimensional. One of the most serious problems with the book is the portrayal of a Native American character, the woman who curses Dominy's dad and causes the teen's predicament. Better choices in this genre abound.—Sharon McKellar, Oakland Public Library, CA