Moonglow

February 11, 2013
Dominy Robineau, 16, wakes up next to her best friend’s corpse, blood under her own fingernails, remembering a full Nebraska moon overhead. Responsibility appears inescapable, but Dominy can’t piece together what happened. She’s been angry at Jess for a long time without understanding why, and at crucial moments her memory goes cloudy and strange. Dominy’s life as a high school princess has been heading downhill for a while, and her father’s unusual behavior isn’t helping. Moonlight both soothes and terrifies Dominy, and that puzzles her, too. The story unfolds slowly in set pieces of dialogue and character analysis, situating Dominy in an odd context, replete with a gay albino wide receiver, an exotic French mother in a coma, and unexpected outbreaks of “guh-ross” body hair. This is horror, not humor, but the line Griffo (the Archangel Academy series) treads is occasionally very fine. Where it ends is unclear: although Dominy figures out what is wrong, there is still no solution in sight as this first book in the Darkborn Legacy series draws to a close. Ages 14–up. Agent: Evan Marshall, the Evan Marshall Agency.

January 15, 2013
A teenage girl is cursed with lycanthropy. The morning after her 16th birthday, Dominy Robineau wakes up, naked, next to the mauled corpse of her best friend. She has no memory of what happened but knows she is the killer. This is the culmination of weeks of weirdness, marked by sudden-onset hirsutism (especially painful for the pretty, popular girl), uncontrollable rages and violent outbursts--all of which her friends somehow forgive. Far too late to be helpful, her father tells her of a crime from his youth and the subsequent Native American curse placed on him: that his firstborn child would become a werewolf. Dominy and her miraculously understanding friends must find a way around the curse and the witch who cast it, Luba--who is dubbed the "Psycho Squaw" by the shamelessly politically incorrect Dominy. The monstrousness of the werewolf curse is, surprisingly, the most believable aspect of the story, a break from the usual "monster with a heart of gold" trope. Some sprawling subplots involving a mysterious set of twins and Dominy's comatose mother don't go anywhere. Instead, they, and hints at other supernatural creatures, remain underdeveloped in a resolution-free ending evidently set up as a teaser for further books. The glimpses of monstrous action from the werewolf's point of view don't make up for the trite human interactions. (author's letter to readers, preview of next book) (Paranormal adventure. 14-17)

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July 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-This entry in the ever-growing body of paranormal YA novels adds little to the genre. In the prologue, readers learn that Dominy, on her 16th birthday, kills her best friend, Jess. The story then jumps back three months to the beginning of the mysterious changes in Dominy that led to this tragedy. Plot development is slow, and the characters do not grow over the course of the novel; what should be a page-turner is actually hard to slog through. The stilted writing has an excessive amount of description that doesn't add to the story, which is far too long. Dominy, who has just found out that she is a werewolf, is not the sympathetic protagonist she needs to be for the plot to work, and readers have no true sense that it's her transformation into a violent creature that is causing her lack of emotional control and personality issues. It's not just Dominy, though; all of the characters are two-dimensional. One of the most serious problems with the book is the portrayal of a Native American character, the woman who curses Dominy's dad and causes the teen's predicament. Better choices in this genre abound.-Sharon McKellar, Oakland Public Library, CA

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
Grades 8-12 Griffo returns to the tiny Nebraska town of Weeping Water (referenced in his Archangel Academy series) with this compelling werewolf story. Dominy Robineau is about to turn 16, and she finds herself increasingly irritable, physically stronger, and drawn to the moon. On her sixteenth birthday, she transforms into a werewolf and kills her best friend, Jessbut can't remember what happened. Her father, who is also the town sheriff, confesses to her that on his sixteenth birthday, he accidentally shot and killed the husband of a pregnant Indian woman, who then laid a curse on his firstborn child to occur on that child's sixteenth birthday. Dominy's wonderfully diverse group of best friends believe and support her as she wrestles with her identity and fate. Her family's tragedies transcend drama and provide real pathos. Well-structured time shifts will keep readers hooked, as will the richly described shifts from girl to wolf. Griffo paints clear, detailed physical and psychological descriptions of the red-haired heroine and the red-furred wolf she becomes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)