Unleashed

Unleashed
Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie
383 pages
Released: November 22, 2011
Publisher: Delacorte
Source: swapped for
★★☆☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

When Katelyn's mother is killed in an earthquake, Katelyn is sent to live with her Grandfather in Arkansas - a long way from her California home.  Things are so different - Kat isn't allowed outdoors after dark because a mysterious creature has been mauling girls in the woods.  But the town of Wolf Springs has secrets Kat knows nothing about - but it's a world she'll soon be dragged into... literally.

The first chapter or so of Unleashed intrigued me, but it didn't take long for me to start noticing some distinct parallels between Kat's world and a certain vampiric world in Forks.  A teenage girl uprooted from the home she loves to a new and very different place to be raised by a guardian who doesn't know much about teenage girls.  A new school, a mysterious boy, a friend with a big paranormal family, something suspicious prowling the woods, awkward school projects... yep Unleashed is Twilight rewritten but with werewolves instead of vampire.  Straight up.

Here's the thing - I probably would have enjoyed this book a lot more had I read it right when it was released in 2011.  I was still pretty excited by the Twilight franchise at that point and the similarities between the two stories would have made me giddy with reading glee.  However, I've moved on from Twilight and the similarities in the books didn't make me happy.  Instead, there were so many parallels I felt like the authors of Unleashed were just trying to ride Stephenie Meyer's coattails.  It was super annoying.

Two stars.  There's not much more I can say here.  If you're no sick of Twilight by now, by all means pick up this book and enjoy it.  But as for me, I'm moving on and won't be continuing on with this series.