Book Info: Genre: Urban Fantasy/Werewolf
Reading Level: New Adult/Lesbian
Recommended for: Those looking for something a little different in werewolf stories
Trigger Warnings: killing, threats of rape

My Thoughts: This is another excellent story. Allison Moon really knows how to create characters and bring in lots of interesting ideas without being too heavy handed. In this book she brings out ideas of women's rights to control their own bodies, the exploration of one's sexuality, and the need to stand up for one's own power.

Lexi spends a lot of time musing over women and their power in this book, with thoughts like, “Tired of women in peril, tired of being reduced to her womb and what monsters and ideologues thought should be done with it.” The girls have to stand up against the Morlocs in this book. I think it's interesting how the two packs in this town are both primarily LGBT; the women of the Pack are mostly lesbians, although there are a couple with bisexual tendencies and one transsexual, while the other pack are all gay boys.

At any rate, if you've been looking for something different in the werewolf genre, definitely check out the Tales of the Pack series. I hope the author will continue to write these books, I'd love to learn more about the legends and lore of this world. Definitely recommended.

Series Information: Tales of the Pack series
Book 1: Lunatic Fringe, review linked here
Book 2: Hungry Ghost

Disclosure: I received an e-book edition from the author in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: Strange is the new normal for college freshman Lexie Clarion. She could be writing papers and going to frat parties like a normal girl, but Lexie is no normal girl. She spends each full moon fighting against the beast that threatens to escape her body, and the rest of the time mooning over her alpha ex-girlfriend.

When Lexie discovers the eviscerated body of a fellow student, she knows the violent full-blood Rare wolves are back on the prowl. But with no proof, no plan, and no allies, Lexie and the Pack have to decide how to fight back. And they have to do so fast, before all the women of Milton become prey. ( )

The battle is back on. The Morlocs are still killing and the town is not safe – especially not for women. After the battles of the last book, the pack is re-establishing itself around Renee as Alpha and ready to fight again – but how can they fight when they’re outnumbered and outmatched? Even beyond that, how do they exist as a pack – and as people – without Blythe’s oppressive hands demanding they conform?

And Lexie still needs to find her place – both in the pack and with herself. Unshifting, torn between her mother’s heritage and her werewolfness she can’t run with the pack. But as more and more of her mother’s past becomes clear, she finds a rift opening between her and her father. Then there’s Archer, missing and desperately missed and never far from Lexie’s thoughts.


There’s something about the world building here that doesn’t work for me. I just don’t quite get it. There’s a lot about the werewolves I don’t understand or rather don’t fully understand. I don’t get exactly what a Peacespeaker is, don’t understand what the knife is, don’t understand Lexie’s mother or her aunt. I don’t understand how it all affected Lexie’s werewolfness.

And it translates into the plot as well – I’m not entirely sure how much her dad knows or is involved in or even entirely what was achieved at the end of the book. I’m not entirely sure what the enemy actually is or what the many kinds of werewolves actually means or where they all came from.

I get the rough shape of how everything works – the plot, the world et al- but it is only a rough shape and it has gaps and assumptions and things just kind of hanging without me really knowing what is happening, why or what that truly means. I just ended up really uninvested in the story. I only have the vaguest idea of what was going on and I don’t especially care to know more, sadly, because I just haven’t been even slightly pulled in.

I do know how all the characters feel - and it’s certainly a very character driven book. We have a lot of conflict and interaction and resolve between a few characters – the character development is very solid for these few, but it’s also kind of repetitive. I think some of the time could have been better spent on the plot, especially since we had interactions like Lexie and Randy which I’m still not entirely sure what the point was. Or some are there for various lessons or making a point but still don’t add to the overall very weak story (like Duance for example). A lot of the book just feels like character interactions between Lexie and a random other strung together in a row interspaced with her angst. If we were going to focus on character interactions there are still other characters in the pack itself who are sorely in need of work – like Mitch (who can basically be summed up as “transman”).

One thing I like a lot is a lot of the problems Blythe brought in the last book have been addressed and challenged. There’s much less infodumping and Blythe’s whole super-orthodox-feminism-is-like-this-and-you’re-a-bad-feminist-if-you-don’t-obey-me has not only stopped but has been heavily called out as the ridiculous thing it is. It was really refreshing to see all of the pack expanding more into their own lives, pursuing their own tastes and rejecting the strictures that Blythe forced on them as her version of a very narrow view of feminism. Reading this really helps deal with a lot of the problems on feminism in the first book because it helps parse the good messages that were given and the arbitrary restrictions that Blythe imposed; rather than presenting them as one solid chunk.

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