Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson

Claire de Lune:
Torn between two destinies?

Claire is having the perfect sixteenth birthday. Her pool party is a big success, and gorgeous Matthew keeps chatting and flirting with her as if she's the only girl there. But that night, she discovers something that takes away all sense of normalcy: she's a werewolf.
As Claire is initiated into the pack of female werewolves, she must deal not only with her changing identity, but also with a rogue werewolf who is putting everyone she knows in danger. Claire's new life threatens her blossoming romance with Matthew, whose father is leading the werewolf hunt. Now burdened with a dark secret and pushing the boundaries of forbidden love, Claire is struggling to feel comfortable in either skin. With her lupine loyalty at odds with her human heart, she will make a choice that will change her forever?

Although I loved the story line of Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson, I found it to be a really slow read and most of the action took place at the end of the book. I really enjoyed the characters of both Matthew and Claire, but I had some real issues with Claire's mother, Marie. I know that some authors like to distance the parents from the teenagers to make the story more appealing, but in this case, it almost seemed as if Claire and Marie had no relationship at all. On Claire's sixteenth birthday Marie reveals to her that she is indeed a werewolf and that there are only female werewolves in the world. Claire begins to go through the changes involved with shifting for the first time; a process that takes three full moon cycles, but in that entire time Marie is not emotionally present for her daughter at all. Claire has questions and Marie continually brushes her aside saying only "When the time is right." What do you mean when the time is right? The right time would be now, when Claire is going through these changes. Their conversations, what little amount they did converse, really bothered me, Marie always talked at her daughter and never listened to what Claire had to say and paid little attention to Claire's suffering. The only real mother/daughter moments came close to the end of the book, when Claire had successfully shifted. I felt Marie couldn't bother paying any attention to her daughter until she was "worthy" of her heritage and being a full werewolf.

I did really enjoy Christine's werewolf lore and the fact that they are all women was different from anything I have read before. And the sweet romance between Claire and Matthew was a pleasure to read, he treated her with respect and I felt their relationship was realistic. Claire is forced to reveal her true self to Matthew--despite knowing that his father is the local zealot werewolf hunter--in order to save his life and his reaction at first was honest fear, but once he distances himself from her and had time to think about her revelation and how much Claire means to him, he returned to Claire with feelings of love and trust. I would definitely recommend this book to other werewolf lovers like myself.