Packed with heart, humor, and incredible friendships--not to mention horror and transformation--this book is one of those that just sings with the power of storytelling, and it proves that any amalgamation of topics can be magic in the right author's hands and with the right concept. With all the horror I read, who would have guessed that my favorite werewolf novel would end up being speculative YA? With everything I read, who would have guessed that this would be the smartest book I'd read which deals with chronic illness? And with how picky I am about YA, and how much I normally get annoyed by the repeated inclusion of chats/messages, who would have guessed that they'd be a highlight of this book? Nevertheless, here we are.
O'Neal deals with chronic illness in a fashion that is real. There's no shrinking away from the pain or the difficulties, either small or large, but there's also no giant surplus of pity, as seems to so often be the case with books based on characters like these. Are there moments of pity from others and self-pity? Sure. But that pity doesn't take over the book or define the characters--not even for a moment. That's part of the beauty of this book. Yes, the main characters mostly deal with chronic illness, but the heart of the book is about friendship, growth, and, yes, lycanthropy and the difficulties of dealing with and/or being a werewolf. Chronic illness (of various types) is important to the story because it affects the characters, but since neither the author nor the characters define someone (or their abilities) based on illness, what arises from the storytelling is a story that simply seems real, werewolfs notwithstanding.
There's also a real effort here to make the messages and chats meet a careful balance. They're not so entertaining and pointed as to feel written by unreal characters just to make a book more entertaining. They're also not included just for the heck of it. They're important to the characters and the story, so they're here. That might not sound like a big deal, but to make chats/messages both feel real to a story and the characters' voices, and also to make them matter to a reader and call to mind the reader's own chat/friendships, is pretty darn magical as far as I'm concerned. I've certainly never seen it done so well as it is here.
And really, all this isn't even getting into the fact that the characters are so real, flawed and yet sympathetic and entertaining, and the page to page so suspenseful that the book is hard to put down.
If O'Neal had written ten books since this one, I'd be ordering them all right now.
I absolutely recommend this one.