Return of the Living Dead …

Season Living Dead Other Monsters

It’s that time of year again when I fit a few spooky novels into my October reading plans.  Last year I read only vampire stories – this year I’m ranging more widely for fearsome creatures and I’ve started off with a ‘Teen Gothic’ novel about werewolves…


Claire De Lune by Christine Johnson

Claire is just a normal teenager and she fancies Matthew Engel.  She doesn’t think she’s anything special but Matthew is definitely attracted to her – yippee!   However these are strange times in Hanover Falls – the town appears to have a werewolf problem. Several gruesome killings have got everyone scared. Matthew’s father is a famous werewolf hunter – he believes he has invented a process to ‘cure’ them and the town is behind him and his quest to rid them of the problem. Then it’s Claire’s sixteenth birthday party around the pool and she’s clicking with Matthew, shame her skin is itching.

Her mother soon breaks the bad news to her – she’s a werewolf, and she can’t go out with the son of the hunter!  Claire is thrust into a quandary – she must learn to manage the transformation and learn about being a werewolf and how to keep it secret, but she of course has fallen in love with Matthew. Marie introduces her to the rest of the pack in the woods at full moon when they go out to hunt animals.  They are equally concerned about the rogue werewolf as it threatens their existence too.

So everything is set up for a classic scenario of  forbidden romance, and a transformational coming of age, but Teen Wolf it ain’t – this is no comedy,  and Claire takes everything very seriously indeed.  These are not normal werewolves either – unusually they’re all female – they mate with normal men, and female offspring will become werewolves; male foetuses can’t survive the mother’s transformation.  The changes and supersenses are generally well handled.  What is less convincing are the relationships. Claire didn’t seem angry enough with her mother to me, becoming accepting of their condition very quickly – after all her mother had disappeared on ‘business’ trips every month for years leaving her with the au pair.  Matthew whilst a hottie, was also rather sweet, which made everything rather predictable and all the ends tied up so neatly.

Still, it was a better read than many of the other ‘Twi-likes’ I’ve read.  (6.5/10)

This post was republished into its original place in my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive

Source: Review copy – thank you.

Christine Johnson, Claire de Lune (Simon Pulse, 2010), paperback 336 pages.

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