Harvest Moon (The Chosen of Bella Luna, #1), by Lyra Zonder

Newman Springs Publishing, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-64096-784-7

Availability: paperback, Kindle

If you like exciting stories, this isn’t for you.

If you like werewolf stories, this isn’t for you either.

If you like horror stories, this REALLY isn’t for you.

BUT…if you loved the Twilight series and can handle pages of graphic sex, this is right up your alley.

Harvest Moon tells the predictable story of Bella and Edward (sorry, Abigail and Killian) with Abby being a half-breed werewolf and Killian being a full-blooded one.  Abby is married to an abusive human husband in Seattle, and Killian is the alpha male of a pack of werewolves in Idaho.  Killian’s sister receives a vision that Abby is meant to be Killian’s lifelong “mate,”so he races off to Seattle to find her, then brings her home. From there, it goes like this, and it’s a minor spoiler: Kidnapping.  Car chase.  Brief fight.  Sex.  Celebration.  A few family revelations.  The End.  That sums up almost 400 pages.

Problems abound in this one.  The main one is that the characters, with one notable exception, are flatter than a flower in a hydraulic press.  Killian is the predictable Adonis, a muscle-bound, wolfosterone-loaded hothead. He’s willing to die, or kill, anyone who interferes with his “soulmate”; while Abby is a timid wallflower.  As expected, they rub off on each other: Abby develops a bit of backbone, and Killian learns to occasionally use more than two brain cells to reason out a situation.  The rest of the characters simply aren’t interesting, with the exception of Nicky ‘The Mouth.” He’s the one character loaded with personality who is actually entertaining. The rest are easily forgettable.  It’s a shame the other characters weren’t developed as well as him: it might have saved the story.

Other problems include the focus of the story and the lack of “wolf time”.  Half the book was just Killian and Abby, professing their love and constantly talking about how they can’t live without each other, they were meant for each other, they would die for each other, etc.  The point was made quickly enough; the author didn’t need to take up the majority of the book with it.  Also, if it’s a story about werewolves, shouldn’t it have, um…WEREWOLVES?  The characters were only in wolf form for about five pages of the entire book– not a recipe for a compelling story.  In addition, parts of the book strain credibility.  For example, the characters are able to disable the security camera system on a hospital, which would typically have its master panel inside, from the OUTSIDE!  Fiction doesn’t have to be perfect, but it helps to have at least a little bit of realism.  Did I mention that these wolves can run over 80MPH?  Wolves aren’t sprinters: were these wolves cross-bred with cheetahs?

In short, this is an imitation of Twilight with enough titillating sex to satisfy readers who like that sort of thing.  Anyone else would do well to avoid this one.

Recommended: for readers of paranormal romance.

Not recommended: everyone else.

Contains: mild violence, mild profanity, graphic sex.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson