Moon Spell by Samantha Young

Synopsis:
Enter a world of fierce wolves, stunning magic and romance.

It’s bad enough feeling different among the human crowd, but feeling different among wolves?

No one said returning to her pack would be easy, especially after ten years without them, but seventeen year old Caia Ribeiro is unprepared for the realities of the transition. Raised in a world where kids aren’t scared by bedtime tales of the bogeyman but by the real life threat of enemy supernaturals who might come creeping into their community to kill them in their sleep, Caia is used to the darkness; she’s used to the mystery and the intrigue of the ancient underworld war she’s bound to by chance of birth. What she’s having trouble with are pack members treating her with wary suspicion, the Elders tucking secrets behind their backs, and her young Alpha, Lucien, distracting her with a dangerous attraction from her decision to uncover the truth.

But as the saying goes ‘the truth will out’ and when it does, Caia will only have so long to prepare herself before the war comes pounding on their door threatening to destroy the safe, secret lives of the wolves… and the girl they protect.

    

My Review:
4 stars — After a less than impressive first read by this author, I actually picked this book next because it had less “good” reviews by my friends than the other paranormal series I have by her, and I kind of wanted to get the “bad” book out of the way if that makes sense.  So I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book!  It had some of the pitfalls of the other book I read (Smokeless Fire) — a bit of info dumping in places, but not nearly as bad.  And I found myself interested in it much more quickly.

In general I really enjoyed Caia.  She had a vulnerability to her that speaks to me in characters…it’s just a personal preference type of thing.  I guess I like the outcasts.  Occasionally she would get on my nerves with her choices, like how she dealt with Sebastian’s crush for example.  And she really could act her age, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just surprising sometimes b/c so often the heroines in YA books act more mature.  But overall she really tugged at my heartstrings with all that she was going through.

I guess part of the reason you really noticed how young Caia was is because of how much older her romantic interest, Lucien, was….not that he always acted like it, but it was a bit of an age gap…one you wouldn’t notice if they were both adults, but it added a strange feel to their romance.  Now, despite that, the kisses were hot.  But the progression from there was a bit of a surprise.

I don’t tend to read a lot of shifter paranormal books…I’m not entirely sure why, I just don’t gravitate towards them.  But I appreciated the world that was created in this book, and the background of all the paranormals in this book…  Sometimes it got a bit confusing b/c there was so much information, but I think it will start to become easier as the books go on.

And I really loved a lot of the secondary characters — from fellow lycans Magnus and Ryder, to the witch Marion and the sassy faerie Saffron.  They added great moment of levity and (obviously) sass, and I look forward to more glimpses of them.

So definitely looking forward to the next book in the series and finding out what’s going to happen in the war and all that shiznit.  A bit on the fence about the romance, but I was glad that there was at least a little bit of it in this book.