Reviewer: Robyn Roberts
Title: Crescent Moon - 4th in Nightcreatures series
Author: Lori Handeland
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
ISBN: 0-3129-3848-9
Release Date: February 2006
Genre/Sub-genre: Paranormal
Year/Setting: Current (or pre-Katrina present)
Overall rating: 3.5
Sexual content rating: Sensual
Language (profanity) rating: Mild/Moderate
Lori's Website:
www.lorihandeland.com
Diana Malone is a cryptozoologist looking to fulfill a promise to her dead husband. She’d love to be a regular zoologist somewhere in a zoo helping pygmy goats. Instead, she’s bound to a vow to her husband to search for werewolves. Her career is in the toilet, much like his was, and it’s getting harder to pay the bills. The best part of all, she doesn’t even believe the werewolves he was so adamant about finding even exist.
With bills mounting and no paycheck in sight, what’s a girl to do when she receives a strange call from a reclusive man wanting to hire her with a carte blanche capability to look for "strange wolves" in New Orleans. Referencing strange deaths by "wild dogs", she finds there are a lot of deaths in New Orleans in the crescent moon phase. This means twice as many deaths in places where these anomalies happen under a full moon.
Once in New Orleans, Diana takes her guide into the swamp where these things are happening. Through a series of events, she meets the reclusive (and elusive) Adam Ruelle, who’s family is reportedly cursed. There are whispers about Adam in New Orleans, he was a Special Forces officer and he may be even more. But, he promises to guide her and help her in her search. Now to hide the passion flaring between them because desire could cost Diana her life.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I thought the beginning was fast paced and crazy and interesting. Unfortunately, I felt the middle section lagged and was difficult to follow. We think Diana is looking for a werewolf, but then she starts chasing zombies and possible vampires and I found myself in a state of confusion. I won’t reveal the final entity she ends up chasing---you’ll like the surprise.
I’ll admit the ending came out of nowhere for me and really threw me for a loop. Nice bit of storytelling there. The ending picked up again and had the same upbeat, fast paced, engaging writing style. If you really love paranormal books, I think you might enjoy the middle section more than I did. The looking into various other paranormal entities didn’t really intrigue me and left me feeling flat about that section.
I think Ms. Handeland’s writing shows great promise and she has a great tale to tell in Crescent Moon. I think as she writes future books some of the lagging sections will correct since she has such a strong sense of storytelling. I just felt like that section needed a little more developing and editing. Overall, Ms. Handeland has a wonderful imagination to come up with the storyline and creature she did for this book and I hope you’ll enjoy Crescent Moon.
Robyn
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