Six Moon Summer

Rylie Gresham is a teenager whose life is falling apart. Her parents are getting a divorce, she's been unwillingly shipped off to a three month long summer camp, and now she's becoming a werewolf. What else could go wrong? If S.M. Reine has anything to say about it....a lot.

It's not tough for me to say that I didn't like Rylie at all in the first half of the book. Understood her, yes. Liked her, no. Her life is tough for a teenager at that point in time and she ends up melancholy and very “woe is me”. I had a hard time coping with her inability to deal with her problems. However luckily the second half of the book Rylie becomes an entirely different person. Literally! She gains confidence, strength, and realizes that things aren't all about her. By the time that the ending came (and wow what an ending) I was a lot more immersed in her character.

As for the supporting characters, I felt like they were just glanced over. By far my favorite was Louise. She received the most character attention and I liked how sweet and honest she was. Seth though, who is another main character, just fell flat to me. There isn't a lot said about him, other than that he is constantly vanishing randomly, and I just felt like Rylie trusted him entirely too easily. Perhaps if he had a bit more build up I would have liked him better. However the friendship between him and Rylie just felt forced to me.

I have to say that the setting of this book definitely helps bring the story to life. Six Moon Summer takes place in a summer camp and so Rylie has so many places to explore, and the opportunity to get caught doing it. I don't think summer camps ever smile upon their campers leaving late at night. I also enjoyed how SM Reine added her own twists to the werewolf lore. It made things a little bit more unique and fresh. My one gripe was that I really wanted to see in Riley's head, to see what she was feeling when she was changing. Following her in third person didn't allow that to happen and it frustrated me to no end.

Admittedly, Six Moon Summer impressed me a lot more than I expected it to. At first glance I thought this would be similar to the other werewolf books out there. Interesting, but nothing new. I was pleasantly surprised to find that S.M. Reine actually does bring her own flavor to this topic. From the story that is built around the actual transformations themselves, to the twists near the end, Six Moon Summer was a fun read. I will keep a look out for book two.