Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Unleashed by Holder and Viguie - OPTIONAL


Holder, Nancy  and Debbie Viguie  Unleashed (Wolf Springs Chronicles Unleashed), 383 pgs.  Delacorte Press, 2011.  $18.99  Content: Language: PG-13 (41 swears); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG-13.  

Katelyn lost her mother during a fire in which she survived, leaving her under the custody of her grandfather who lives in the backwoods of Arkansas in a quant and dark town called Wolf Springs.  When Katelyn arrives to her grandfather’s cabin he orders her to stay out of the woods and provides her with an escort, a young man named Trick, to and from school.  While at school, Katelyn quickly becomes friends with a girl named Cordelia who seems to have a weird home life with her father and two sisters.  One night while coming home from a party, in which Trick ditches her, Katelyn has car trouble and finds herself in the dark woods trying to change a tire.  She is attacked by an animal that she thinks is a wolf, but it seems to have a mystical power as well.  Too scared to confide in her grandfather and Trick about the actual events of the attack, she passes it off as a dog bite.  However, as Katelyn starts to have heightened senses she thinks that Cordelia and her quirky family might have the answers to what actually happened to her in the woods.  

The setting in this book is great because it is dark, creepy and mysterious.  Katelyn seems a bit clueless at times and it’s obvious there is a supernatural element to the town, but it takes forever for it to be uncovered.  Right at the end when the reader finally gets some answers (leaving a lot of questions still unanswered), the book is over, leaving room for the sequel.   The first half of the book is optional, but the second half is advisable.  However, with young adults sometimes they won’t stick through half a book to get to the good parts, which frankly I don’t think they should have to.   

MS, HS - OPTIONAL.  Reviewer, C. Peterson.

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