Friday Reads: Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock!!

Happy Friday guys!

This Friday for me means going back to work after a few days off, so not the same kind of Friday that you all might be having! Still, I only work today and then tomorrow night shift and then I'll have a few days off again, so YAY!

For today's Friday Reads I have a book that came highly recommended from my dear blogging friend Alyssa from The Eater of Books and that should have been my December book for the Alyssa Recommends shelf, but that I failed to review until now and didn't even manage to finish in December either! I will still be choosing and reading another book for my Alyssa Recommends book for January!




Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Hemlock is one of those books I've had in my TBR list for a while, but since it is also one of the Alyssa Recommends book, I finally decided to go ahead and read it!

And I must say it was a very different kind of werewolves story. The story starts at an already complex point, when werewolves have been in the open for a while and they are considered dangerous and monstrous and prejudice is rampant and the government has set up confinement camps (and maybe it's just me but that reminded me of Nazis and Jews and their camps).

This is more than just a paranormal story since it's got a murder mystery that is more than just a simple murder mystery with very deep implications. Actually I think that's what defines this book, nothing is as simple as it might seem at first, even if it doesn't seem simple. There are layers upon layers to everything, from the characters, to their relationships, to the plot!

When I first started reading I wasn't sure what was going on, with Mac still grieving the loss of her best friend and how there seemed to be a certain tension with the two other best friends, so much that I feared a love triangle. But then everything started getting more tangled and more clear at the same time! You start to see that Lupine Syndrome is dangerous but it is also used as a political weapon and a way to gain power by some. And with all the layers that we uncover in this book, I still feel like there's much more to dig up in the books to come, and that is quite exciting!

Mac is a very interesting main character, with a tendency to trust but keep people at arm's lenght sometimes, or as Kyle said to treat others as she's expecting them to disappoint her or abandon her (paraphrasing, since that's not the exact quote). Mac has been left behind by important people in her life and she seems to be expecting it from everyone she comes to care for. She's also a bit rash, impulsive and headstrong, but she's fiercely loyal and also doesn't let ignorant prejudice drive her. And frankly she needs to shake that town to get some answers instead of waiting for things to happen.

Kyle and Jason are the two guys that completed the quartet of best friends. Jason was Amy's boyfriend and he seemed to be involved with her death, since she was killed by a werewolf, he feels like joining a vendetta against werewolves, but as usual, everything is more complicated than it seemed at first! They are the two guys that at first seemed to be candidates for a love triangle, but thankfully it never really turns out this one, not truly.

I'm really pleased that I finally digged into this one and I'm looking forward to reading Thornhill next, since I cannot wait to discover more layers to the story, both of the murder and of the Lupine Syndrome. Very well deserved 4 stars for this one!



View all my reviews

Tell Me Tuesdays #23!!

Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome ladies of Please Feed The Bookworm and La La In The Library where we can share how we choose the book we are currently reading from our TBR pile!

I'm always curious about that, cause as much as I tend to make myself a rough schedule for books to read and the like, I'm quite a mood reader and sometimes I just HAVE to ignore my schedule and read something else!

 Thornhill by Kathleen Peacock

Mac can’t lose another friend. Even if he doesn’t want to be found.

The ripple effect caused by Mac’s best friend Amy’s murder has driven Mac’s new love, Kyle, to leave Hemlock and disappear from her life forever. But Mac knows that Kyle plans to enroll in a rehabilitation camp, where he can live with other werewolves. She refuses to accept his decision, especially since the camps are rumored to be tortuous. So she sets out in search of Kyle with a barely sober Jason—and Amy’s all-seeing ghost—in tow.

Clues lead Mac to find Kyle in a werewolf den in Colorado—but their reunion is cut short by a Tracker raid. Now Mac and Kyle are trapped inside the electric fences of Thornhill, a camp for young werewolves. As she devises an escape plan, Mac uncovers dangerous secrets buried within the walls of Thornhill—and realizes that the risk to the people she loves is greater than ever before.

Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton

For readers of A Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games comes an epic new series.

The night Quin Kincaid takes her Oath, she will become what she has trained to be her entire life. She will become a Seeker. This is her legacy, and it is an honor. As a Seeker, Quin will fight beside her two closest companions, Shinobu and John, to protect the weak and the wronged. Together they will stand for light in a shadowy world. And she'll be with the boy she loves--who's also her best friend.

But the night Quin takes her Oath, everything changes. Being a Seeker is not what she thought. Her family is not what she thought. Even the boy she loves is not who she thought.

And now it's too late to walk away.


I still haven't finished The Ghosts of Heaven, but I got stuck with the story about the witch trials and I'm still steeling myself to go back to it, so right now I've started another ARC, a February one, and the sequel to Hemlock, since the final book should be arriving soon-ish (I preordered it!).

So what are you all guys reading and how and why did you decide to pick up that book? Shiny new ARC? Comfort read? Scheduled for review? Must have new release? Tell me!!

Tell Me Tuesdays #22!!

Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome ladies of Please Feed The Bookworm and La La In The Library where we can share how we choose the book we are currently reading from our TBR pile!

I'm always curious about that, cause as much as I tend to make myself a rough schedule for books to read and the like, I'm quite a mood reader and sometimes I just HAVE to ignore my schedule and read something else!

 Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock

Fans of Maggie Stiefvater and the hit television show True Blood will flock to this first book in the supernatural mystery series set in a town where werewolves live in plain sight.

Mackenzie Dobson's life has been turned upside down since she vowed to hunt her best friend Amy's killer: a white werewolf. Lupine syndrome—also known as the werewolf virus—is on the rise across the country, and bloodlust is not easy to control. But it soon becomes clear that dangerous secrets are lurking in the shadows of Hemlock, Mac's hometown—and she is thrown into a maelstrom of violence and betrayal that puts her in grave danger.

Kathleen Peacock's thrilling debut novel provides readers with a mystery that Kimberly Derting, author of The Body Finder, calls "clever and frightening," while Sophie Jordan, New York Times bestselling author of Firelight, raves: "Forget every werewolf book you've ever read. This one breaks the mold."

 The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

Timeless, beautiful, and haunting, spirals connect the four episodes of The Ghosts of Heaven, the mesmerizing new novel from Printz Award winner Marcus Sedgwick. They are there in prehistory, when a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs; there tens of centuries later, hiding in the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who people call a witch; there in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the 20th century, where a mad poet watches the oceans and knows the horrors it hides; and there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world. Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place.




I got The Ghosts of Heaven as a Read It Now on NetGalley and so far I've loved the first story and I've just started the second one. I am having a bit of a reading slump, and the fact that the second story deals with Catholic priests wanting to kill people (mostly women) in the name of God, isn't helping since that ALWAYS makes my blood boil.

Hemlock is my December Alyssa Recommends book and I'm hoping to finish it before the year ends, even if my review will have to be posted in 2015! 

So what are you all guys reading and how and why did you decide to pick up that book? Shiny new ARC? Comfort read? Scheduled for review? Must have new release? Tell me!!