Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson

Summary from Amazon:

Torn between two destinies?

Claire is having the perfect sixteenth birthday. Her pool party is a big success, and gorgeous Matthew keeps chatting and flirting with her as if she's the only girl there. But that night, she discovers something that takes away all sense of normalcy: she's a werewolf.

As Claire is initiated into the pack of female werewolves, she must deal not only with her changing identity, but also with a rogue werewolf who is putting everyone she knows in danger. Claire's new life threatens her blossoming romance with Matthew, whose father is leading the werewolf hunt. Now burdened with a dark secret and pushing the boundaries of forbidden love, Claire is struggling to feel comfortable in either skin. With her lupine loyalty at odds with her human heart, she will make a choice that will change her forever?

Review:

Beginning Claire de Lune I wasn't sure whether or not I would enjoy it.  Since when it comes to werewolf novels I'm usually not too pleased with them (Well, with the exception of Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. Though that book wasn't told from a werewolves POV, so maybe I shouldn't put it under this category. Hmm.). Anyway, starting it I liked it a lot for the first couple of chapters, and then it started to drift off and disappoint for a while, but then an amazing thing happened. What was that, you may ask? Well, it started to get really interesting, leaving me to be quite pleased by the end of Claire de Lune.

Claire is a character that's facing a lot right now because her long-time crushing is finally noticing her, her town is facing a terrifying werewolf killing people epidemic, which may or may not cause her best friend to leave for the summer, and, oh yeah, she just found out she comes form a long line of werewolves. So that means that she's a werewolf too! Leaving her carefree summer to suddenly get a lot more interesting as she  faces her new fate as a werewolf and tries, along with her pack of werewolves, to find out who is behind the attacks.

I found Claire to be likable from the start because she was brave and smart even if she did make some immature decisions at times. Also, I loved seeing her relationship with Matthew grow over the course of the book and how she came to  terms with her mother too. Though, with saying that, I really felt that a lot more character development was needed in Claire de Lune. Since beyond Claire, you didn't really get much back-story and understanding of the other characters beyond what was at the surface. Hopefully more will be reveled in the sequel that Christine is currently working.

The premise of this was great! I loved how Christine crafted Claire De Lune in way that only women could be werewolves and that each werewolf, except for ones that choose to be alone, belonged to packs. It was interesting seeing the back-story on all of this along with seeing Claire's transition from being a normal teen into being a teen who was also a werewolf. Plus, I enjoyed the murder mystery she featured because it often made for me to be on the edge of my seat, eager to find out who was behind the killings. 

And the ending was definitely something I wasn't expecting, which made me happy because I love unpredictable endings.

Even with the faults Claire de Lune had in character development and pacing, I still suggest this book to teens looking for a new and unique werewolf story! Lastly, I'm looking forward to reading the sequel even though the ending of Claire de Lune basically cleared everything up.
 
Grade: B

Claire de Lune will be released May 18, 2010.

Source: Simon and Schuster for review. Thanks Venessa!