The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group - Review

I haven't read Catherine Jinks' previous book in the series, The Reformed Vampire Support Group, so I came to this series fresh. I don't think it made much of a difference. The 13-year-old narrator, Toby, doesn't know what's going on when he wakes up in the hospital after having been found in the dingo pen on a wildlife preserve. Not knowing what happened in the first book allowed me to figure things out at about the same time Toby did, though Jinks does drop lots of hints that Toby's new friends, especially Nina, might be vampires.

The title tells us two things: there will be a werewolf, and the werewolf will be abused. The book starts out in a somewhat light-hearted tone, with many references to Toby's perfectly ordinary suburban Australian life and the pranks he and his friends like to pull. Then, about 170 pages in, Toby gets kidnapped, and the story starts to get very bleak. If Toby were a little younger, more sensitive or more vulnerable, some of the things that happen to him might be horrible. But, with his maybe-werewolf DNA, Toby is just tough and resilient enough to emerge triumphant.

The middle section of the book is of the dark action-adventure variety, and there's a hefty dose of paranormal intervention towards the end. The last chapters imply that if there is a third book in the series, it's likely to involve zombies. The more menacing tone makes it a different class of YA paranormal from the breezy paranormals of Marlene Perez's Dead Is series, but it should appeal to young horror fans.

I received an ARC of The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group through the Amazon Vine program. I was not otherwise compensated for this review.