The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

This is the story of real vampires. They don’t sparkle. They don’t run fast. They don’t have superhuman strength. They’re just not cool. Instead, they’re constantly sick. They throw up a lot. They’re weak. They must avoid sunlight and drink the blood of guinea pigs to keep themselves going.

Sounds glamorous doesn’t it? But what happens when one of their own is killed and the slaying leads to an illegal werewolf fighting ring? Wait… werewolves exist? Yep. They change shape with the full moon and don’t have any health hangups. Lucky them.  So now it’s up to a bunch of weak vampires to travel a far distance, in daylight, to save the life of a werewolf and capture the humans believed to have slayed a vampire.

For those of you who might remember, I actually read the sequel to this book first several months ago, which focused on the werewolves, rather than the vampires. I have to say, I enjoyed The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group much better than this one. This was good, but it took me about ten chapters to get into it. I needed to see some action, and with sick characters who can barely do anything, it took awhile for anything to actually happen. That was my biggest problem with the book. Once the story got going and the pace picked up, it was a very enjoyable read.  

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

Grace was bitten by werewolves when she was a child. But she never turned into a wolf. Instead, as a teenager, she keeps an eye on the wolf pack that roam the woods just outside her house, especially on the one wolf with the yellow eyes who saved her life the day she was bitten. But when another teenager is attacked and killed, the men of the small town go on a hunting spree in order to kill the nuisance wolves. Grace arrives home to find a boy on her deck, bleeding out from a gun shot wound which heals almost instantly. She recognizes his yellow eyes as that of the wolf who’s been watching her for years from the woods. His name is Sam and he’s a werewolf struggling to hold onto his human body just so he can be with Grace. However, the colder it gets outside, the more his body wants to shift to keep him warm. Then all hell breaks loose when he learns how he was picked to be bitten as a child, as more and more teens are becoming werewolves and the older wolves are making their final shift into their wolf form for the rest of their lives. Is there a cure for Sam and the other newly changed humans? Can they even find the new wolves before they wreck havoc on the town and its inhabitants? And what will happen to the love between Sam and Grace if Sam makes his final shift into wolf forever?

This is the first book in a series. The second is titled Linger, and a third is on its way to the printing presses. I enjoyed every moment of this book! It was a fast read with the chapters flipping the point of view between Sam and Grace. Most of the chapters were short, which seemed to make the book go by that much faster. I loved the way she treated the werewolf myths, that instead of shifting on a full moon, they shifted when it got cold out. They are humans during the late sprint, summer, and early fall, before shifting to wolf to keep warm. This was a richly built world you can step into as if you were going through the closet to Narnia. A fantastic read I would highly recommend!