I read this book for 1 reason only. I was planning on reading Horror the entire month of October in celebration of Halloween, and I wanted a book for each monster typically associated with the holiday; zombies, werewolves, vampires, ghosts etc. I chose The Wereling for my werewolf read.

You can imagine then how disappointed I was when I discovered there wasn't a werewolf in this book. Despite the title, "The Wereling," the blurb on the front boldly proclaiming "HALF MAN, HALF BEAST," the mention in the summary in the back about a "creature possessed," and the big, menacing wolf eyes glaring at the reader right on the front cover; this is actually a murder/suspense novel.

It starts creepily enough. The prologue is set in 1881 in a spooky little village that is haunted by a vicious werewolf. It is killed by a silver bullet, and the spirit of the wolf retreats to regain strength, so it can feed again in the distant future. In its monologue, it decides to leave the outer appearance of it's next victim unchanged. I don't know why I didn't put it down here, on the fourth page, but instead I continued.

100 years later, Harvey Painter is a young man struggling to make a living for himself. Stuck living with his single mother whom he doesn't get along with and a job that doesn't pay well, he has nothing to do but while away his free time in his bedroom, obsessing over werewolf movies and monster magazines. When he sees an advertisement for an expensive, high-quality werewolf costume, he cannot contain the urge to purchase it even though it will cost him most of his savings. Well, you can see where this is going.

I can live with that though. So long as the book is a good read all is forgiven, right? Unfortunately the writing isn't great. The dialogue was silly at times, the character's actions nonsensical, and the book was just littered with obvious grammatical and typing errors. I felt like I was reading a bad horror movies from the 80's. Except without the werewolf.

I can't say I would recommend this one. It did read fast, it was one of those bad books I couldn't put down, but I think I was mostly just eager to get it over with. I'm sure there are better 'werewolf' books out there. Avoid! ( )