Happy Book Birthday to ALL HALLOWS’ MOON, the sequel to SIX MOON SUMMER, which I previously reviewed here along with an author interview.
Title: ALL HALLOWS’ MOON
Author: S.M. Reine
Release Date: Out Now (September 9, 2011)
Publisher: Self-Published
Received: e-ARC for review from publisher
Goodreads
SUMMARY:
Rylie survived becoming a werewolf at great cost. She moves to her aunt’s ranch in the hopes she can enroll in a new high school and quietly continue her life... with a few distinct changes. She transforms into a beast every new and full moon and struggles to control her murderous urges.
Without many werewolves left, it’s hard to stay in hiding. A family of hunters -- Eleanor, Abel, and Seth -- recognize the signs and follow Rylie to her new home. They want to stop her before she murders someone, and the only way to do it is with a silver bullet. Seth soon realizes the werewolf is Rylie, the one monster he failed to kill. Worse yet, he’s still in love with her.
Torn between family and love, Rylie struggles to reconcile her feelings and control the wolf within while Seth fights to do what’s right. But what is right-- obeying desire or duty?
Werewolves still aren’t my thing, so I couldn’t fully connect with ALL HALLOWS’ MOON, but that’s a problem on my part, not the author’s. I first tried SIX MOON SUMMER over the summer for a tour, thinking the premise sounded unique: The novel was about a teenager named Riley who had been bitten and was trying to overcome the curse so that she wouldn’t turn into a werewolf. By continuing to read this review, you will be subjected to a major spoiler from the end of Book 1, so if you haven’t read it yet and plan to, please come back to this review later. Okay, so here we go with those spoilers… By choosing to save werewolf hunter Seth from being attacked by another werewolf, Riley sacrifices the chance to remain human. Now fully a werewolf, Riley must come to terms and figure out how to balance the human and the monster that both lie within her.
ALL HALLOWS’ MOON begins about two weeks after SIX MOON SUMMER ended. Riley can’t remember much of the last two weeks. She knows she was a wolf most of the time, but everything is blank. She hitchhikes her way to her Aunt Gwyn’s farm, knowing she can no longer live in the city with her mother. Being around animals is harder than she thought it would be. They smell delicious and she wants to eat them. On top of that, they know she’s a predator and run far away when she attempts to do her chores. To make matters worse, Gwyn enrolls her in school. Riley still has bad memories of the way her fellow campers treated her over the summer, and combined with the rage now lurking within her, as trouble adapting. She takes each day one at the time, counting by moons now. All other time has lost its meaning. She becomes friends with Tate, the school stoner, and passes mostly under the radar until another new student arrives at school: Seth, the werewolf hunter she fell in love with over the summer. Seth, however, hasn’t returned alone. He’s here with his mother Eleanor and brother Abel. They came to hunt werewolves after hearing about a bunch of attacked cows on the news. Out here in the open, there’s little Seth can do to protect Riley…and she isn’t sure he fully wants to. The way he acts at first makes her angry, because it seems he doesn’t care that she gave up her humanity to save him.
While it’s nice to see more of Seth in this novel and learn more about his family life, I feel that his character wasn’t developed fully. Nor were many of the minor characters. Riley went through intense changes, as is proper since it’s her story, but no one else could really keep up. The parts when she changes into her wolf form are brutally described and full of gore, especially when it comes to the full moon during All Hallows’ Eve. Becoming a werewolf is painful, never easy. Riley hates the monster she has become and wants nothing more than to be human once more. There are a few hints in the novel that more opportunities might open up for her in LONG NIGHT MOON, coming in 2012. It would be nice if ultimately, the SEASONS OF THE MOON series is about the ability to break this curse and make the book become something outside the ordinary, but time will tell. For now, while Reine continues to bring new ideas into the story, this time around, the book feels more like a standard entry into the werewolf genre.
COVER DESIGN
Once again, S.M. Reine has designed her own cover. I love all the uniting themes between the two covers, from the orange border to the multiple moons, forest, and dark atmosphere. And the fun title treatment is back and fits in even more perfectly this time around. I wish the model and wolf matched on both covers. Granted, the girl and wolf on the cover of ALL HALLOWS’ MOON look more like Riley than the ones on SIX MOON SUMMER. At the same time, I wish the model’s hair and wolf’s fur had been colored on one of the two books so that both covers would match. I do like the brutal cover this time around, because it hints at the horrors lying within the second leg of Riley’s journey.
Reine did a fun cover design series for SIX MOON SUMMER earlier this year here:
PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE
Title: ALL HALLOWS’ MOON
Author: S.M. Reine
Release Date: Out Now (September 9, 2011)
Publisher: Self-Published
Received: e-ARC for review from publisher
Goodreads
SUMMARY:
Rylie survived becoming a werewolf at great cost. She moves to her aunt’s ranch in the hopes she can enroll in a new high school and quietly continue her life... with a few distinct changes. She transforms into a beast every new and full moon and struggles to control her murderous urges.
Without many werewolves left, it’s hard to stay in hiding. A family of hunters -- Eleanor, Abel, and Seth -- recognize the signs and follow Rylie to her new home. They want to stop her before she murders someone, and the only way to do it is with a silver bullet. Seth soon realizes the werewolf is Rylie, the one monster he failed to kill. Worse yet, he’s still in love with her.
Torn between family and love, Rylie struggles to reconcile her feelings and control the wolf within while Seth fights to do what’s right. But what is right-- obeying desire or duty?
Werewolves still aren’t my thing, so I couldn’t fully connect with ALL HALLOWS’ MOON, but that’s a problem on my part, not the author’s. I first tried SIX MOON SUMMER over the summer for a tour, thinking the premise sounded unique: The novel was about a teenager named Riley who had been bitten and was trying to overcome the curse so that she wouldn’t turn into a werewolf. By continuing to read this review, you will be subjected to a major spoiler from the end of Book 1, so if you haven’t read it yet and plan to, please come back to this review later. Okay, so here we go with those spoilers… By choosing to save werewolf hunter Seth from being attacked by another werewolf, Riley sacrifices the chance to remain human. Now fully a werewolf, Riley must come to terms and figure out how to balance the human and the monster that both lie within her.
ALL HALLOWS’ MOON begins about two weeks after SIX MOON SUMMER ended. Riley can’t remember much of the last two weeks. She knows she was a wolf most of the time, but everything is blank. She hitchhikes her way to her Aunt Gwyn’s farm, knowing she can no longer live in the city with her mother. Being around animals is harder than she thought it would be. They smell delicious and she wants to eat them. On top of that, they know she’s a predator and run far away when she attempts to do her chores. To make matters worse, Gwyn enrolls her in school. Riley still has bad memories of the way her fellow campers treated her over the summer, and combined with the rage now lurking within her, as trouble adapting. She takes each day one at the time, counting by moons now. All other time has lost its meaning. She becomes friends with Tate, the school stoner, and passes mostly under the radar until another new student arrives at school: Seth, the werewolf hunter she fell in love with over the summer. Seth, however, hasn’t returned alone. He’s here with his mother Eleanor and brother Abel. They came to hunt werewolves after hearing about a bunch of attacked cows on the news. Out here in the open, there’s little Seth can do to protect Riley…and she isn’t sure he fully wants to. The way he acts at first makes her angry, because it seems he doesn’t care that she gave up her humanity to save him.
While it’s nice to see more of Seth in this novel and learn more about his family life, I feel that his character wasn’t developed fully. Nor were many of the minor characters. Riley went through intense changes, as is proper since it’s her story, but no one else could really keep up. The parts when she changes into her wolf form are brutally described and full of gore, especially when it comes to the full moon during All Hallows’ Eve. Becoming a werewolf is painful, never easy. Riley hates the monster she has become and wants nothing more than to be human once more. There are a few hints in the novel that more opportunities might open up for her in LONG NIGHT MOON, coming in 2012. It would be nice if ultimately, the SEASONS OF THE MOON series is about the ability to break this curse and make the book become something outside the ordinary, but time will tell. For now, while Reine continues to bring new ideas into the story, this time around, the book feels more like a standard entry into the werewolf genre.
COVER DESIGN
Once again, S.M. Reine has designed her own cover. I love all the uniting themes between the two covers, from the orange border to the multiple moons, forest, and dark atmosphere. And the fun title treatment is back and fits in even more perfectly this time around. I wish the model and wolf matched on both covers. Granted, the girl and wolf on the cover of ALL HALLOWS’ MOON look more like Riley than the ones on SIX MOON SUMMER. At the same time, I wish the model’s hair and wolf’s fur had been colored on one of the two books so that both covers would match. I do like the brutal cover this time around, because it hints at the horrors lying within the second leg of Riley’s journey.Reine did a fun cover design series for SIX MOON SUMMER earlier this year here:
Great review. Too bad you didn't enjoy it more. I like the All Hallows Moon cover best. It looks more professional. The other looks home-made. I wouldn't mind reading a werewolf book but I suppose I should find a really fantastic one to start with.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing an honest review.