The Crescent by Jordan Deen

I got this book for review thanks to Lynsey and her site UK Book Tours, thank you!! xx

"Becoming a werewolf is not an option for seventeen-year-old Lacey Quinn, but death can be a strong motivator.


Lacey is so focused on her future that everyday life has passed her by. Counting down the days to her eighteenth birthday, Lacey is almost home free. But when she falls for the mysterious Alex Morris, she lands in the middle of an ancient war between two enemy wolf packs. Tempting dreams, tantalizing lies and a dangerous love triangle ensues leaving Lacey heartbroken and confused.


Lacey's fate rests in the hands of Alex and Brandon, but both are pulling her strings for their own agenda's. Even as she slips further into the dark world of werewolves, Lacey struggles to find the truth and save the only family she's ever known."

Werewolves are my favourite supernatural creature, and have been basically always. I confess I got in to fantasy via vampires, well via Buffy actually, but it was werewolves that got me in to UF books with Kelley Armstrong's Bitten, thus starting my obsession with the supernatural. So I'm willing to give pretty much any werewolf book a try in an attempt to add to my werewolf book collection. When this book went up for tour on the UK Book Tour site, it was an automatic sign up for me. I wasn't let down at all!

Lacey is seventeen, human, no idea of a supernatural world around her. When a huge dog, a stray, appears in her garden and she can't find his owners, she lets him stay. He offers her a comfort, a security she was missing at home, her parents constantly fighting. Then she meets Alex. He just walks in to the school office one day to register for classes. Lacey can barely take her eyes off him, or form words around him. But he's very mysterious, and knows a lot more about her than she's told him. As things progress with him, they get stranger. She starts having vivid dreams, not of Alex, but of another guy, Brendon, who appeared just once in the school office, shortly after Alex's arrival. Strange stories of werewolves, packs and mates start flying around and Lacey begins to wonder what's real. How much is reality and how much a dream, a nightmare. She struggles to figure out the truth, to choose a guy, first love or true love. Caught in the middle of a way she didn't know existed. Where one wrong move from her could mean death for others.

It didn't take long for me to get in to The Crescent and start loving it. Lacey started off on the right foot with me simply by being an animal lover. She feels unsettled at home, her parents constantly fighting, hiding things from even her closest friend about them. She's never really felt like she really belongs, like an outsider, and an outcast at school. It's easy to see why she felt so off balance with Alex's attention.

I love the build up, the different reactions to both guys, to the idea that werewolves exist in her world, how certain elements of being a werewolf work, and the tension that fills it all was pretty perfect. Kept me reading and I barely put it down. I loved seeing how the dreams and reality clashed, confusing for Lacey and how she dealt with it all in her head, how it's written, made me start questioning what was actually real at times as well. There are certain aspects of 'reality' in the book that have serious dream like qualities.

This is a debut book and it was awesome, it's not very long at only 187 pages, but it packs a lot in to those pages. There is a lot of depth to Lacey, I loved getting to know her better, or trying to anyway, and trying to figure out the mystery surrounding both boys and the wolves. The rest of the characters are pretty mysterious, none as straight forward as they sometimes seem, and while I loved and seriously disliked some, they all held my interest and have a role to play. It's well written, it's smart, it's got a werewolf I've fallen fairly in love with and a protagonist I'm aching for, while urging her to make the right choices.

I confess I've been going through a phase of simple hatred for love triangles in books, and knowing I was about to wade in to another, made me cautious going in to this book. My heart is aching enough for fictional love triangles without adding another. But dammit, I fell. I fell for the characters, the setting, the wolves and yes, I wish it was just a little easier for Lacey to pick, that she'd realise the right guy and not be torn any more, but well, this is the first of a trilogy and that wouldn't really work now would it? Love triangles where it's too obvious who the girl should pick, or those where the second love interest is simply an obvious plot twist drive me crazier than those which tear me apart. This one is far closer to the latter. For me, it's an easy pick which side to come down on, but I can sympathize with Lacey's decision and why she is so torn.

The plot revolves around the love triangle, but there is a bit of an added twist I didn't fully see coming until it was explained. That, with everything else I've already listed as great about this book, meant I wound up loving it. The ending was so tense, I really wasn't sure what was going to happen, how it would play out, and it left me wanting a whole lot more. I can't wait for book 2, Half Moon (due out 13th Jan 2011), or even the third book, Full Moon (due later in 2011). This was a great YA werewolf book with a dark edge. I highly recommend it and I'm going to get my own copy of it just as soon as I can! My only real complaint about this book isn't about the story at all, it's wondering where the heck the editor was. There are a lot of grammar mistakes and typos in this book. They bothered me a bit to start with, stopping it from being a smooth read, but I soon got deep enough in to the book that I skimmed right over them hungry to find out what happened next. It's a pretty fast paced book and like I already said, I could barely put it down. Great read that I really can't do justice for. Just read it.

Rating: 9/10