Review: Unleashed

Title: Wolf Springs Chronicles: Unleashed
Author: Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie
Publisher: Doubleday
Your Age Recommendation: 14+
Publication Date: 8th December 2011
Available for Kindle?: Yes
Pages: 383
Copy: For Review
My Rating: 3/5
Reviewer: Molly

Synopsis:
When Katelyn starts at her new school the only person she knows is the handsome and intriguing Trick Sokolov, an acquaintance of her grandfather. She's surprised when the popular Cordelia Fenner invites her home and when she meets Cordelia's hot brother, she begins to think her new life might be OK after all. But as she spends time with the family, she realises that the Fenners are harbouring a deep dark secret. Every bone in Katelyn's body tells her that the Fenners are mad, bad and dangerous to know - but how can she give up her only friend, and how can she ignore the way Justin sets her blood on fire with a single look? Katelyn finds herself caught between three major werewolf clans who have been at war with each other for centuries - a war, it seems, that Katelyn is destined to end.

Review:
For the most part Unleashed is like pretty much every other supernatural book out there. Orphaned teenage girl. Moves to new town. Something weird lurking in the forest. Told not to go out at night but does anyway. Finds herself caught up in something much bigger than she expected. Oh, and two sexy boys who she finds it hard to choose between. It fills that craving you get every so often for something that is a little predictable, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good book.

It took me a little while to get into Unleashed because it takes so long to get to the werewolves! You spend the majority of the book waiting for the penny to drop for Katelyn. Maybe it’s just me but I knew pretty much instantly who at least one of the werewolves were from the moment they appeared.

Katelyn is an okay protagonist. She spends the first part of the book moaning about having to move to the middle of nowhere, how she can’t do gymnastics anymore and talking about how she and her friend would make fun of people from places like Wolf Springs for being hicks. It doesn’t make you like her very much as she come across as quite spoilt and ignorant, but to be fair she’s an teenage girl being taken away from everything she knows in LA to live in the middle of the woods with her estranged grandfather. I don’t think many teenage girls would be particularly happy about that.

There are some moments where Katelyn is frustrating. She forgets very quickly about gymnastics and makes no effort to find a way to carry on with this one thing she apparently lives for once she’s in Wolf Springs. We know that her mum died quite recently in a fire, but we don’t see Katelyn being very emotional about this. She’s also very naive at times to the point that I felt unsure of her age, especially when you consider that she grew up in a city and her dad was shot, surely she has some knowledge of the world? Apparently not very much.

Katelyn’s friend, Cordelia is equally empty-headed at times but is a little stronger than Katelyn in her actions and because of her background she is quite interesting. She was a beautiful, peppy cheerleader type but as the story progresses she becomes pale and withdrawn because of her family. Her sisters are manipulative and her father is slowly going mad and Cordelia seems to bear the brunt of their actions a lot, although we don’t really see much of that, and I found that interesting.

The love interests are your usual sexy boys with tight t-shirts who always smell amazing and look like they stepped out of a magazine advert. Katelyn is warned off both boys by her friend and other kids from school, but of course finds it hard to resist them. Trick is gorgeous, kind and funny while Justin seems to hold some sort of power over her that even Katelyn doesn’t understand. Neither have a lot of depth to them at this point but they do certainly come across as irresistible. I did feel like Katelyn’s feeling towards the boys were quite realistic and the romances are sweet, and a do get a little hot and heavy in places which is always a good thing, but I was never really rooting for one boy over the other, they both seem to have a lot of secrets. However I did have a soft spot for Trick.

The storyline itself was enjoyable and I found it intriguing. Something in the woods is killing people. Wolf Springs is in the middle of nowhere and most people have lived there forever, so there are lots of old legends about hellhounds, demon bears, wolves and all sorts of other ghost stories which puts Katelyn a little on edge. She doesn’t understand the town and the woods, they’re scary and foreign to her so to know that something is lurking out there that could kill her makes it even worse. Although that doesn’t stop her taking stupid risks.

Everyone she knows seems to have secrets too, I felt suspicious of her grandfather, her friends and their families. At times it felt a little predictable but that didn’t ruin the book for me and I did see some plot points coming a mile off but I still enjoyed the great reveal.

The writing is generally well done but at times there are cringe-worthy mistakes and odd phrasings that made me stop and re-read parts because it didn’t make sense. There are confusing descriptions that left me feeling unsure of what characters really looked like, especially Trick who seems to be a mixture of every nationality under the sun, which is fine but could be described better. Characters also interrupt speech so much at times that there were moment where I wasn’t even sure who was talking anymore. I know that both authors have written hundreds of stories and books so to see such amateur mistakes in a published work irritated me, even more so when they have both written New York Times bestsellers!

There is no mystery with Unleashed that you are going to be reading a supernatural novel about werewolves, you know what you’re getting in to and for many readers that’s what you want. If you enjoyed Twilight, Fallen or similar books then you’ll most likely enjoy Unleashed as well. This book is very much an introduction to the series and so you only get a glimpse of the main plot, the characters are not yet as fully developed as I would have liked and you are left with unanswered questions. There are flaws with Unleashed and yet despite this I still found myself finishing the book and wanting to know what happens next, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to Katelyn in the next book and whether the flaws within this book will be rectified in the next.