Werewolf books are becoming a dime a dozen. Correction, they've been a dime a dozen for a few years now. The paranormal/supernatural genre is flooded each month with werewolf or vampire fiction, many of those books rehashing the same things over and over with new names. It's hard to find a book worth reading, so, thankfully, a woman like Megan Powell gives us Waxing.

Liz is happy, if a little lonely, with her life. A solitary practitioner of the Wiccan path, she works in a magic shop and generally spends her days dealing with the dabblers, the obsessed, and the occasional real-deal witch. She uses the word "new age" like some people use the F-word, and has no problem telling people what she thinks of them.

To say she's got trust issues would be like saying the Titanic sprung a small leak. But, aside from that, she's happy go lucky.

Enter Derek, who claims he's an author researching werewolves. Something doesn't sit right for Liz about him, but he's fun and he speaks her language.

Derek isn't just researching werewolves, he is a werewolf. And he's not an author. He's a sculptor. Splitting hairs though, right?

He's not only a werewolf either, he is one who can't Change. And he's the alpha. A recent battle for pack dominance left him cursed with the inability to alter between his forms. His girlfriend/mate/alpha female is a cold shrew that questions his masculinity since the fight, and his pack is slowly falling apart and there's nothing he can do about it.

If he could just get back his ability to Change, all will be right with this world. If he can become whole again, everything will be perfect.

But all there are secrets underneath the calm waters of Derek's pack. Secrets that could get him, and Liz, killed.

Ms. Powell presents not only a believable werewolf, but one that you'd want to date your daughter: clean cut, polite, and loaded. Liz is a "real woman", the sort of which is just recently starting to see the pages of novels. She's not tall, she's not blonde, and she can't squeeze back into her size fourteen jeans without a lot of baby oil and a shoehorn. In other words, she's just like 98% of the women in America.

Waxing didn't offer up a lot of new information on werewolves, but it was a good read that left me feeling happy with the world.
 
 
Reviewed By Marissa
© September 2007