Title: HemlockAuthor:Kathleen PeacockEdition: hardcoverSeries: HemlockReleased Date: May 8th, 2012Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Goodreads / Amazon Mackenzie and Amy were best friends.
Since then, Mac's life has been turned upside down. She is being haunted by Amy in her dreams, and an extremist group called the Trackers has come to Mac's hometown of Hemlock to hunt down Amy's killer:
A white werewolf.
Lupine syndrome--also known as the werewolf virus--is on the rise across the country. Many of the infected try to hide their symptoms, but bloodlust is not easy to control.
Wanting desperately to put an end to her nightmares, Mac decides to investigate Amy's murder herself. She discovers secrets lurking in the shadows of Hemlock, secrets about Amy's boy-friend, Jason, her good pal Kyle, and especially her late best friend. Mac is thrown into a maelstrom of violence and betrayal that puts her life at risk.
Kathleen Peacock's thrilling novel is the first in the Hemlock trilogy, a spell-binding urban fantasy series filled with provocative questions about prejudice, trust, lies, and love.
In Hemlock, werewolves are the hot-spot. Half the town is afraid of them, and half of the town are okay with them. That latter half is the half of the population that ARE the werewolves. Mac has had her best friend taken away from her because of these werewolves, and she's ready to avenge Amy's death. With the help of Jason and Kyle, she tries to figure out the murderer, but has a couple interesting side-roads that stray her off her path and make her wonder if she really wants to kill the werewolf that took her best friend.
Mac may have been one of my favorite female characters, that wasn't totally bad-ass. Most of the female characters I like are super brave and just kick-ass amazing! Mac had some of those qualities, but most of all she was just curious and protective. She cared more about the well-being of others rather than herself. A lot of authors try to portray that in their characters, but they just come out and say that the character is like that, so it doesn't have as strong of an impact. With Mac, she only realized this towards the end of the novel when Kyle and Jason told her she can't protect everyone.
The romance in this - OH MY GOSH. First of all, there's Mac. She's totally oblivious to the fact that these two guys love her, because she's too worried about taking care of everyone around her. She sees people falling in love around her, but she rarely ever gets jealous about it. Now there's the two boys: Kyle and Jason. Kyle is her best friend, and has been ever since she moved to Hemlock. Next is Jason - her deceased best friend's boyfriend. She's never had feelings for him, until she starts realizing things about him. Personally, I'm all for Kyle, since he's sweet and caring, while Jason can just be a jerk. Kyle ended up being my favorite character, but prepare yourself to be a tad bit angry with him in the end!
Now you may be thinking, stop talking about the characters and get to the actually storyline! Well here's the thing: awesome stuff happens right away in the beginning that I don't want to spoil it! Pretty much, werewolves are a big deal in Hemlock and an anti-werewolf group called the Trackers come in to take care of the 'pest-problem.' Mac is torn between being on the side of the Trackers or being on the side of the protesters. After all, her best friend was killed by a werewolf! She has her reasons for not liking the Trackers, such as the fact that they're turning Jason into a crazy-anti-werewolf-man. After some information gets leaked, Mac's hatred for the Trackers grows immensely. Her hatred is so strong that it made me truly and utterly hate the Trackers!
I had a few suspicions after all the characters were introduced of who was the murderer of Amy. I won't tell you my two guesses, but I will tell you that one of the guesses was the actual murderer, and the other was actually a werewolf! I wasn't very far off! Even though I guessed the murderer pretty soon into the novel, it was still interesting to see how everything played out!
What I found super funny was the fact that Kyle was super sweet in the novel. You may be asking: 'what? why is that surprising?' Well, you see, my brother's name is Kyle and he's a total introvert and we are very rude to each other at times. When I read the premise and saw the name Kyle, I was thinking: "ohh, this is going to be fun to read!" Then I got the part where Alexis was introduced. My name is Alexis, and let's just say it's not a common name in books. I was super surprised by this, ad the fact that she was so mean. I may actually hate her!
I'm only going to give this one four stars, even though I gushed so much about it! It had a lot going for it, but I still don't know if I'd rank it up in my favorites. Nonetheless, this werewolf novel blew me away and I can't wait for the sequel next spring!
