by Jesus Ibarra
Jason Starr presents what happens to a normal guy, Simon Burns, who gets lured into a “pack” by three other stay at home dads who are more than they seem to be. Simon’s life isn’t going that great. He gets fired, he is having marital problems, and is adjusting to becoming a stay at home dad. And after being drawn into a wild night, he blacks out and wakes up in the woods naked. After that night, Simon notices extreme changes. Simon is suddenly stronger, faster, acute senses, and overall more animalistic. The gist is he has become a werewolf and possibly killed somebody. Now Simon has to deal with why these other dads picked him to join the pack. He also has to try to become somewhat more human to soothe the worries his wife is having in relation to his changes. 
The plot is interesting. The author’s prose is strong. For some reason, I found the possible antagonist, Michael, much more interesting than the main characters, Simon and his wife, Allison. They are too normal and nothing about them makes me care about Simon’s life falling apart. However, the changes in Simon’s behavior are written extremely well, I just wish the beginning wasn’t full of clichés. The guy is just a family man who has lost passion in his life and marriage, who never does anything out of the ordinary, then suddenly becomes a werewolf.
I do like the mythology Starr has created as it’s refreshing, but for me it seemed like there wasn’t any sense of urgency and little character development. And that lack of character development makes me hate characters who I think are supposed to be liked. I think that the author couldn’t find a proper balance between straight fiction and paranormal fiction, which leads to some of the problems this book had. That all being said, it’s definitely not a bad book by any means, the author’s writing style is extremely well done, and as a summer read it’s really good.
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