Review: Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock

Title: Hemlock (Hemlock #1)

Author: Kathleen Peacock

Release Date/Publisher: May 8th 2012 by Katherine Tegen Books

Read: August 4th, 2012

Pages: 416-hardcover-library

Series: 

1. Hemlock
2. Thornhill
3. Untitled

Synopsis:

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.

What I thought:

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this book up, but was I ever glad it was about werewolves! I haven’t read one of those types of books in ages, and I was definitely psyched to see where this author took it.

It starts out with Mac’s best friend dying at the hands of a white werewolf. The werewolves has become common knowledge to the public 12 years earlier, and the Lupin Syndrome was considered a disease. Anyone bitten or confirmed to have it were shipped off to camps, which were rumoured to be horrible. Their rights were stripped away and they were treated like animals.

Dealing with the death of her friend, Mac is haunted by dreams she has of Amy blaming her for things and sometimes just being her normal self like she was before. She wants to stop the dreams, and she decides that the only way to have closure is to find out how she died and the wolf that did it. Amy’s boyfriend Jason is handling it even worse, creating trouble and drinking and making an alliance with the wrong crowd.

The Trackers, those who hunt werewolves, come into town after the attacks start up again and try to rally everyone together. They are known for their cruelty, and they can even drag someone away without even fully confirming if they have LS or not. When Jason decides to join to get revenge for Amy, Mac tries to talk him out of it but he won’t listen. When someone close to her is discovered as being a werewolf, she does her best to protect them, even if it involves her lying to those she loves and getting hurt in the process.

Everything is falling apart for Mac, but she still keeps going strong to find clues about what happened, even when just about everyone she knows is lying to her.

This was a great debut book for the author, I loved how there were werewolf scenes, but it talked so much about them as people and showed the injustice of how they were being treated. What they were was out of their control. And the interactions between the characters and all the emotion that went on kept me reading this book non-stop. Mac I have to admit was dense sometimes, but she had other things on her mind at the time as well.

If you love werewolves definitely give this book a try! I definitely can’t wait to see where the author takes the rest of the series!