WEREGIRL by C.D. Bell
I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Weregirl back in July, and let me tell you - it was an AMAZING read!! I loved this take on the werewolf lore and how a modern girl deals with this ordeal she is thrown into.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. i like fantasy novels involving werewolves and the like when they aren’t too cheesy or cliche - yes, I know…But Meredith, aren’t all werewolf novels cliche? Well, in short, no. A good fantasy based on the werewolf myth is exactly that - based on the myth. But not like every single other story out there - with the author’s own twist to the story.
I also really loved that while, yes, she’s a teenage girl who notices the boys in her school, that's not her focus.. She’s beyond set on going to college, one way or another (she’s so smart). And on top of that - she works at the local vet clinic!! Basically living the life I wish I had in high school.. Her character is really strong and independent.
Then, as she works on her way to college, she gets something she never bargained for when she was making all her plans - isn’t that the way it always happens? Her life completely changes from there, obviously, and I think this series will get really good!
SYNOPSIS:
Nessa Kurland is running for her life.
C. D. Bell's WEREGIRL is a fast-paced teen thriller set in Tether, Michigan, a town on the brink of shutdown since it was stripped of its resources by corporate polluter Dutch Chemical.
High school junior, Nessa Kurland, is a cross-country runner with her eyes set on one thing: a college scholarship as her one-way ticket out of Tether.
Talented teammate Cynthia Sinise invites Nessa on a nighttime run through Tether's overgrown forest trails. But she speeds ahead, leaving Nessa alone to discover a trapped wolf. Nessa tries to free the animal but is badly bitten, seemingly ruining her hopes for a strong fall season with the cross-country team.
Instead, Nessa's freakishly quick recovery is followed by improved running times. All her senses are heightened. Nessa has transformed.
She has become a werewolf.
In her new state, Nessa learns there are things about Tether that powerful people want to keep hidden. Why does a Nobel Laureate work at the small-town medical clinic? Are top college athletic scouts really interested in her emerging talent? Can she trust Chayton, the motorcycle-riding guide her friends have faith in? WEREGIRL's Nessa must navigate her junior year and true human darkness, while making peace with her new, wild nature.
EXCERPT:
If wolves had been around for millennia, how was it that science still didn’t seem to have a handle on basic facts about them?
And if science was so foggy on wolves, how could she possibly expect to find anything about what was actually happening to her?
Then Nessa felt her blood turn cold. On the fifth page of results following her search for wolves + returning + bite +Michigan, she saw the words “Tether” and “attack.” She clicked through and came to a blog post called “Why I Would Move Away from Tether (If I was stupid enough to live there in the first place)” written by a rancher in Wyoming.
What was someone in Wyoming doing talking about Tether?
Could there possibly be a town called Tether in Wyoming too?
No, Nessa saw, this guy was talking about Tether, Michigan. It was right there in the first sentence of his blog entry.
In the first sentence of his entry was the line: “The best wolf is a dead wolf.” He wrote: “The best wolf is a dead wolf, but if you live anywhere near Tether, MI, chances are getting much more likely the wolf is coming to get you.”
Nessa read on, all about how wolves coming back into Wyoming had started attacking his sheep herd, and he had started tracking news reports. He had a link to a website cataloging wolf attacks on animals and humans in the United States and Canada. In the last year, there were eleven attacks on livestock or humans within the Tether town limits, more than any other municipality in the country.
“Not surprising,” the rancher went on, “given that the Algonquin word for wolf ‘mahigan’—is basically the state name. Don’t give me that BS they teach Michigan children in school that it’s from the Chippewa ‘meicigama,’ for great water, after that big lake they’ve got up there. Which word sounds closer to you?”
Was she living in a state that was basically named after wolves? Was Tether the epicenter of a wolf-demic, as the rancher said?
And if she was, why hadn’t she heard anything about it?
The Wayfaring Bibliomaniac Guest Post from C.D. Bell, author of WEREGIRL
Werewolf? Yes. Monster? No.
When I think about werewolf stories, I think about Victorian London. I envision a scientist who has somehow injected himself with a substance that causes him to transform at the full moon. He’s both fascinated and convinced he can control it. But then he can’t. During the transformation, he becomes hideous, changing from civilized man about town to a monster who does not recognize his loved ones, who hunts and kills human and wolf prey alike.
Maybe this works for stories about men who turn into wolves, but when I set out to write Weregirl, which sets a werewolf story on a girl, I realized I was going to have to return to the drawing board on what a werewolf is. The Weregirl tagline reads, “Everyone has an animal inside.” Note: animal. Not monster.
Not that wolves aren’t a little bit monstrous. Imagine you’re in the woods, alone. Shine a flashlight into the darkness, and your beam may illuminate a yellow eye. You may hear a low growl, catch a glimpse of matted fur, shifting shoulders. It may glint off an exposed white fang—wolves’ mouths alone are pretty terrifying with their pink and black gums, the way their teeth look sharp and fierce and long, and the saliva. Yuck.
But if you turn off your flashlight and wait for the sun to come up, you could see that maybe wolves have a lot to love beyond the fact that they can sometimes scare the pants off us. Here are three of the many virtuous wolf attributes I used in creating a more balanced wolf personality for Nessa and the other wolves in Weregirl.
Wolves are good at family: Did you know wolves mate for life? The packs that they travel in are basically composed of family members, but the kind of family that has a lot of people over for dinner and maybe stays for long periods of time in the guest room. You might have Mom, Dad, Mom’s best friend, that guy who was in Dad’s band back when they were both in their 20s, that guy’s friend who is painting the garage, you, your brothers and sisters, and that woman who was your babysitter and still helps out.
Wolves don’t kill for sport: Okay, maybe that’s not the most winning endorsement, but it’s important in distinguishing them from the monsters we sometimes take them for. Wolves only kill when they have to to live, and they generally aren’t that great at it.
Being a wolf is harder than it looks: Yes, wolves are at the top of the food chain, but it’s not easy being the kid. And you know the whole alpha thing--one wolf to rule them all? Well, that’s a lot more fluid than it appears. Watch wolves and you’ll see you’ve got hundreds of little interactions where status is being acknowledged or challenged. The alpha has to constantly assert dominance. It looks much more like a high school cafeteria than a throne room and as anyone who has survived a day of a high school social scene can tell you, that’s not nothin’.
PURCHASE INFORMATION + LINKS
WEREGIRL [Chooseco LLC] will be available in hardcover and e-book formats via all online and select brick-and-mortar book retailers as of November 1, 2016. Pre-order your copy today on Amazon or the WEREGIRL website: http://weregirl.com/products/weregirl
AUTHOR & PUBLISHER BIO:
About C. D. Bell:
When she's not biking the streets of Brooklyn, NY, you can find C. D. Bell writing in a decrepit RV clinging to the side of a hill in upstate New York, trying to teach herself to watercolor, or inventing her own recipes. She is a voracious reader of anything and everything fantasy, supernatural, or romance. And she swears that the monsters she often writes about are not real-- at least she hopes not.
Created by a talented team of six female writers and inspired by the working tradition of television writers, C. D. Bell is a Chooseco author pseudonym developed with teen author Cathleen Davitt Bell, who has written I Remember You [Knopf 2015], among other novels for young adults.
The second installment of the WEREGIRL trilogy is already in the works.
About Chooseco:
Chooseco publishes the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Widely commended for its appeal to reluctant readers, the interactive, multiple-choice multiple-ending series is the 4th-bestselling series for children ever published, with more than 265 million copies translated into 38 languages. Chooseco has sold over 10 million copies since the series re-launch in 2006. Weregirl represents Chooseco’s first foray into full-length, non-interactive young adult fiction.
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