A review by rachelyrun
Feral Nights by Cynthia Leitich Smith
3.0
So lets just state the obvious first - Leitich Smith has a lot of talent working for her, but this title is terrible and I blame some genius in her publishing house. Google any other books with "feral" in the title and you don't exactly get other YA supernatural thriller genre fiction.
Anyhow. That aside. This is the kind of book that makes me wish I had the option to give half stars. It's fairly lightweight, both in length and in deep content (which is why I dropped a star, and wished I could keep half of that star for how much fun this was to read) but the world-creation and action were spot on. I immediately believed in an American South where werepeople and vampires and ghosts mixed freely with humans. Keeping the characters straight was tricky when the action moved so quickly (and every chapter was from someone else's first-person point of view - ugh, pet peeve!) but I never had trouble picturing the supernatural stuff she described. That takes a deft touch with description and Leitich Smith show unusual skill.
I definitely went straight back to my library and got the other 2 books in the trilogy... unfortunately named "Feral Pride" and "Feral Curse." Wow. Sometimes a bad title just comes back to haunt you... again and again.
Anyhow. That aside. This is the kind of book that makes me wish I had the option to give half stars. It's fairly lightweight, both in length and in deep content (which is why I dropped a star, and wished I could keep half of that star for how much fun this was to read) but the world-creation and action were spot on. I immediately believed in an American South where werepeople and vampires and ghosts mixed freely with humans. Keeping the characters straight was tricky when the action moved so quickly (and every chapter was from someone else's first-person point of view - ugh, pet peeve!) but I never had trouble picturing the supernatural stuff she described. That takes a deft touch with description and Leitich Smith show unusual skill.
I definitely went straight back to my library and got the other 2 books in the trilogy... unfortunately named "Feral Pride" and "Feral Curse." Wow. Sometimes a bad title just comes back to haunt you... again and again.