I almost didn't finish this one because the writing was pedestrian. What kept me reading was the main character Nessa. I found I liked her and was rooting for her. In the rural town of Tether, MI, Nessa runs for the cross country team and hopes for a college scholarship as her way out of Tether. Her town had been contaminated by Dutch Chemical which had been bought by Paravida, a mysterious corporation whose generosity toward the town is suspicious but no one looks a gift horse in the mouth. Nessa is bitten by a wolf and she begins to experience better sight, hearing, and smell and then learns that she is turning into a wolf at the new and full moons. A mysterious Native American boy helps her adjust to her circumstance and while running with a pack of wolves, Nessa stumbles on another pack of very aggressive wolves. The mystery and suspense build but the reveal about what Paravida was doing in the town was laughable.

You learn in the acknowledgments that this book is the result of a team of five who outlined the story which was then written by the author. ( )

This is not your typical werewolf story. I was a bit confused at first because in most shifter stories there is a community of shifters that are there to help the newly turned wolf learn how to live with their new condition. In this story there wasn't. After being transformed into a werewolf, Nessie seeks council from a shaman who explains what she must do in her new form as a wolf. He tells her it is a gift and that she must use her new gift for the betterment of society. Nessie is trying to deal with the high school angst that everyone goes through while learning to cope with becoming a werewolf. Nessie joins a family of wolves that try to communicate that something is happening in her town. She discovers that the town's "benevolent" company is actually an evil corporation that is secretly experimenting on people and wolves. Her little brother, Nate, is involved in a medical trial run by that company. When one of the kids involved in the study mysteriously dies, Nessie works with one of her friends and another wolf to try and discover the company secrets to find out if her brothers life might be in danger. Overall, I liked the book. I wished that there had actually been a better explanation of how a regular wolf could transform her into a werewolf. I was glad that she could join the wolf pack but still didn't understand why she was changed. Thanks to NetGalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. ( )

Note: Some spoilers for Books One and Two of the Weregirl trilogy.

This is the third book of the Weregirl trilogy, featuring Nessa Kurland, a 16-year-old werewolf now living in Oregon but formerly a junior at Tether High in Michigan. Nessa lives with her dad, Daniel, since her mom Vivian passed away (sort of). Also with her are her younger sister Delphine and younger brother Nate, who is on the autism spectrum. And then there is “CM” for ChiMera, an amalgam of Delphine’s DNA along with that of a bat, a pig, and a deer. Apparently this is a great combination, because it allows CM to read minds.

CM has been kept caged up in a lab, and is angry and resentful. She is also jealous when the “real” sisters show up in Daniel’s life. Nessa thinks maybe she can “save” CM by talking her father into letting CM into the house and allowing her to interact with the rest of them.

Meanwhile, Nessa’s werewolfiness has taken on new dimensions. She starts seeing emotions as colors and seeks out Professor Halliday, a werewolf expert at Stanford, to help her figure out what is going on. Professor Halliday informs her she is a tetrachromate.

[In real life, tetrachromacy refers to a condition common to some organisms that enable them to see colors via four light receptors. Apes, Old World monkeys, and humans normally have only three and are therefore trichromats. Thus while humans cannot see ultraviolet light, organisms with tetrachromacy have a larger visual spectrum. But there is no indication that emotions would be visible as colors. This is just a paranormal enhancement, so to speak. Also, organisms with tetrachromacy are called tetrachromats, not tetrachromates with an “e.” But I suspect if Anne of Green Gables had tetrachomacy she too would be a tetrachromate with an “e.”]

During the rest of this book, Nessa increases her skills in reading moods by assessing the colors swirling around the heads of everyone. But as she maintains in what was perhaps inadvertently the funniest line in the book:

“She might be a werewolf. She might be a tetrachromate. But she was also a teenager, and sometimes it felt good to stick with that.”

Meanwhile, Delphine is acting as sullen and angry as CM, but for no apparent reason, except to provide an excuse in the plot for Delphine to run off and discover a bunch of homeless kids living on her dad’s property beneath the radar. When Nessa finally discovers Delphine and the kids, she feels an instant connection with Bo, the female “alpha” of this pack of children they call the “Outsider Kids.” So much for her undying love for Luc. Teenagers!

Nessa bonds with Delphine by telling her the truth: mom is not really dead - she is a wolf now, and Nessa is a werewolf once a month. Delphine in turn tells Nessa her bad mood is because she is having bad dreams about a big white wolf. CM has been having similar dreams. This plot line gets sort of dropped, however - not a bad thing, because there was a great deal of confusion about it among the group authors.

Nessa and Delphine decides CM is a “typhon” (the name for a monstrous serpentine giant and the most deadly creature in Greek mythology.) Delphine says to Nessa “I’m not living with a typhon” at an early point in the book, characterizing CM as a typhon out of the blue. By a later location in the book, however, they both forgot this occurred. CM has left them a computer file to read labeled “Typhon.” They both never heard of that - Delphine says, “Typhon?” “Isn’t that part of the Percy Jackson universe?” Then they google it. Alas, the perils of group authorship!

Back at the homestead, Daniel is hosting a big scientific meeting at Chimera Corp with Japanese scientists with whom he collaborates. A big unusual storm comes up - a typhoon.

“Typhoon” sounds like “Typhon”! Very suspicious! Typhon was also, according to Greek mythology, the father of destructive storm winds. So this storm, they wonder - “could it possibly be CM’s revenge?” CM just gets more and more power! Must be the bat genes.

In any event, after a suspenseful denouement, some bad people get their comeuppance and some don’t, and one of the Japanese scientists tells Nessa: “We cannot demand perfection of one another. We can only demand commitment.” What?

At the end, some of the problems get resolved, and Nessa decides she needs a break from saving the world from evil, and is off to college.

Discussion: C.D. Bell is a pseudonym for a group of six female writers who collaborate on books. They don’t always coordinate their efforts perfectly however. There are mistakes that indicate some members of the group weren’t always paying attention.

Moreover, there are a number of grating grammatical errors. You would think among the six of them, someone would know the difference between “who” and “whom.” And subjunctive mood? Unknown, apparently.

Evaluation: One wishes there had been better editing and a more “realistic” plot. Even paranormal stories need to be grounded in something that seems like reality. ( )

Here was my dilemma. I wanted some respite from the horrible news in real life, so what to read? No non-fiction obviously, and no fiction involving missing children, racial discord, corruption, thievery, or vampires. I practically had no options except werewolves!

The main character of this trilogy is Nessa Kurland, a 16-year-old junior at Tether High in Michigan. Nessa lives with her single mom, Vivian, who is a vet technician; younger sister Delphine; and younger brother Nate, who is on the autism spectrum. Nate is seen once a week at a free clinic sponsored by Paravida, the mysterious research facility that took over the old Dutch Chemical plant.

Nessa runs for the track team, and is hoping to get a scholarship to go to college. She decides to increase her training, and goes out at night, into the woods. She gets bitten but not seriously injured by a wolf, at least, not in a way she comprehends at first. Pretty soon the full moon reveals to her that she has become a werewolf. She confides in her BFF Bree, who helps her get in touch with a shaman, Chayton, to learn about what is happening to her. Chayton explains she was “chosen by the wolves. They have called you to help.” “Help with what?” she asks. Chayton tells her that’s the question she needs to find out.

For the rest of the book, we track Nessa’s progress adjusting to her newfound skills as a wolf, figuring out why they “chose” her, and following her interactions with the area wolf pack. As a wolf, she is able to investigate the nefarious goings-on at Paravida, and she meets another werewolf.

Discussion: Nessa is an appealing character but that appeal meets heavy obstacles with the rest of the plot. The outrageously depraved villains of Paravida are way over the top, as are the acts they commit. The sequences when Nessa changes back and forth between werewolf and human exhibit a huge lack of thought. Where do her clothes go when she becomes a wolf and why does she appear instantly dressed again when she changes back?

There was a bit of an interesting side plot over Nessa’s guilt about how her great running times were related to her being a werewolf - was that as “illegitimate” as doping or not? But that story arc was dropped.

C.D. Bell is a pseudonym for a group of six female writers who collaborate on books. They don’t always coordinate their efforts perfectly however. There are mistakes that indicate some members of the group weren’t always paying attention.

Moreover, there are a number of grating grammatical errors. You would think among the six of them, someone would know the difference between “who” and “whom.” And subjunctive mood? Unknown, apparently.

Evaluation: Even bad news in real life can't justify bad writing in fiction. ( )

I read an advance reader copy of this book so I suppose there is a very slight chance that the issues I noted will be fixed before publication but ARCs are generally very, very close to the published versions so I don't hold out much hope. The worst thing about this book is the absolute disappointment I felt after reading the horrible mess of the end. I wasn't upset about the cliffhanger, I was expecting that, however after a very strong 3.5-4 star story throughout the first 3/4 of the book, the tangled garbage bin of the end left me with no option but to severely lower my score. It wasn't just the grammatical and the sudden flip-flopping between character point-of-view (which wasn't done at all for 3/4 of the book). It was the fact that it truly appears that the author completely forgot where the story had been going for most of the book. Or maybe, that some other, less talented author had suddenly taken over. I don't want to spoil any plot points so I'll just say that the story, which was a wonderful exploration of a teen girl's attempt to not only navigate high-school in a poverty-stricken town but to navigate being a powerful protective werewolf in a high-school in a poverty-stricken town quite suddenly took a hard left turn and became something that not only made little sense, was very poorly written. While some of the plot points introduced toward the end of the book could be interesting and could fit in with the story as a whole, dumping them in at the end of the book with no explanation and very poor writing and/or editing ruined the entire book for me. Unless I see proof that the last 1/4 of the book was completely redone before publication, there is very little chance that I will ever bother to read any further books in this series. Which is unfortunate, because I really, really loved this book when it began! ( )