After years of being imprisoned, used and abused by his father, Holden is finally settling down in Stillwater, a small New England town. He's been on the run for a long time, trying to cover his tracks by changing his name and moving from one place to another as far away from his home state as possible. 

A happy protective bubble of Stillwater seems like heaven. It has a few quirks, of course, but which town does not? Everyone knows everybody and people are mostly friendly. That is until Holden meets Daniel, a local vet (who is a veteran). An injured cat and the severity of the injury make Holden a catnapper when he refuses to surrender the poor kitty for euthanization and flees the clinic. 

Daniel knows what Holden is and confronts him shortly after catnapping. From that moment on the town secrets and the mysterious creatures start coming out of the woodwork full force. Every time you turn the page, there is a surprise. Every time you think you finally know who/what the person is, you are proven wrong. Things, people, situations turn and twist; there is humor, there are pockets of darkness and despair; there is an amazing diversity of characters (not going into details on the characters' subject, cause - spoilers! ;))

I could not get enough of the book and really wanted to give it five stars, but here is this:

- it ends smack in the middle of things. I can't even call it a cliffhanger, more like the author roughly separated the manuscript in two without much thought. 

- the story lost its momentum around 80%. Instead of fast paced it became stagnant with characters sitting around in one spot for weeks, waiting for the next full moon, reflecting, eating pizza and even (finally) having sex, since there is literally nothing else to do. But it looks like things are going to pick up with a vengeance in book two :D

Otherwise, an excellent read and pure pleasure :) Highly recommended

This particular order of the series didn't work for me, unfortunately. I wish I read it backwards.

*

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW!
These are just my feels. They are so strong that I have an urge to spill them for all to see:

The two teenage boys, the MCs, Korin, 15 and Telme, 16, cried through the entire book until the very end where they are what ...40+? I almost had a breakdown myself just out of the sheer frustration, and boy was I mad when my kids stole the last 10 sheets of paper out of my printer! My evil plan had failed :(



But if you don't mind the teenage drama and buckets of tears, this book might be OK for you.
I would have easily given it 4 stars, but I am sorry, I just can't :/ 3 stars, but I will up it to 3.5 on Leafmarks and Booklikes.

I wanted to like this very much, but the writing put me off fairly quickly.

The dialogues and scenes were clumsily written and no real picture of the protagonists or the story line arose.

I felt detached and bored right after the start.