| Title | : | The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0152066152 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780152066154 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 |
| Publication | : | First published October 1, 2010 |
He assumes that his two rambunctious best friends are somehow responsible, until he discovers that they're just as freaked out as he is. Then the mysterious Reuben turns up, claiming that Toby has a rare and dangerous 'condition'. Next thing he knows, Toby finds himself involved with a strange bunch of sickly insomniacs who seem convinced that he needs their help.
It's not until he's kidnapped and imprisoned that he starts to believe them - and to understand what being a paranormal monster really means.
The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group Reviews
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They say one picture is worth a thousand words. So here's one picture...
And now, for the thousand words...
In a fight between the Abused Werewolves and the Reformed Vampires, the werewolves would get their asses handed to them. On a plate. With gravy. The Abused Werewolves Rescue Group comes nowhere close to the kitschy coolness that was
The Reformed Vampire Support Group. For one thing, this book reads like it's written for a much younger audience. The protagonist himself is only thirteen. Now thirteen year old boys aren't the smartest or most entertaining subjects at the best of times, and this one pretty much killed the book.
When Toby Vandevelde wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the night before, and is told that he was discovered naked in the dingo pen of a national park, he knows things are never going to be the same again. Soon he's caught up in a whirl of madness that includes werewolves, kidnappers and vampires as well as a hysterical mother and crazy friends.
Let's deal with the friends first. I don't know any 13 year old boys, so I'm not sure if they really are this stupid, or Jinks exaggerates. If it turns out that teenage boys really are dumb as a doorpost, dear god, I'm going to hand my kid over to some Nazi-trained foster mother until he reaches the Age of Reason. I cannot begin to tell you how annoying Toby's best friend Fergus is. This kid got to me like nails on a chalkboard; I understand that overly precocious kids are sometimes meant to be adorable. This one certainly wasn't and I can't figure Jinks' purpose in putting him there. It certainly doesn't bode well for a book when I spend about half of it wanted to bash one, if not ALL, of the main characters' heads in!
Toby dismisses his other friend Amin as being a quiet boy willing to accede to Fergus' stronger will, but Toby himself is no different. He's a complete and total doormat who agrees with every crack-brained scheme his friend proposes, even when they make him hugely uncomfortable. Here's the difference between Toby and Nina - Nina is a sickly, weak vampire with a debilitating disease that makes her life hell. Yet she goes out into the Outback to kick ass and investigate mysteries and rescue werewolves. Toby is a strong, sensorily-gifted werewolf with no problems other than a need to be shut away during the night of the full moon. Yet he is the bigger victim. The whiner. The doormat. Is this the contrast that Jinks meant to draw? If so, I compliment her for her cleverness, but it did not make me like the book any better. Added to the fact that if this is a book meant for Age 12 upwards, the allegory is too subtle for the target audience.
Almost all of the main characters in this book are batshit crazy and annoyingly hysterical. Not to mention unnecessarily aggressive. In fact, the only character I saw displaying any amount of maturity (apart from the vampires) was Reuben. I really did like Reuben in RVSG, and now I like him even more because he didn't make me want to shoot him with one of the guns Toby keeps whining about in the book. Don't even get me started on Danny; I'm so glad he turned into a zombie, I only wish he'd done it sooner. Toby, of course, did his amazingly convincing impression of a doormat. And Sergio added himself to the list of unmemorable, irritating supporting cast.
This book was paced weirdly. With RVSG, I found that the pacing was slow overall, but not annoyingly so. With AWRG, there were weird jumps in the pace. There were large tracts of time, especially in the first two hundred pages, when absolutely nothing happened. Then too much stuff happened at once, and then Toby sort of sunk into a stupor, from which he was shaken by more stuff happening too fast.
It appeared to me that it wasn't Toby's age that made him such a wishy-washy character; yeah, yeah, cusp of adulthood, adolescent uncertainty, yadda yadda, I know the spiel. But it seemed to me that it wasn't hormones that were making Toby such a miserable character; it was the complete lack of a spine. And, of course, I just wanted to bitch-slap his mother, despite the fact that she was acting like a perfectly reasonable mother confronted by circumstances beyond her grasp. But still. Be quiet already and just listen, woman!
Also can I say how weird it was that this was a book about werewolves, but not ONE of them ever turned into one in the course of the book? All of the transformation happens off-page, either before the book begins, or as a footnote in the concluding chapter. How, exactly, did Toby become convinced that he was, in fact, a werewolf?!
All in all, this book is a disappointment. RSVG was a way, way better book; so much so that I'm sentimentally contemplating the idea of going back and raising its rating by a star for being so much more funny and interesting than this one. I think the next one's about zombies, and I hope Jinks is planning to redeem herself, or I'm going to be Very Disappointed.
Thankfully, I didn't have to pay money to read this, since it was supplied to me by the publishers via Net Galley. No considerations, monetary or otherwise, affected this review. -
I am DNFing a book. Let's all be proud of me! I made it a 100 pages in and this is just way too middle grade for me. I don't like the writing style nor the main character and I just don't care what happens.
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These days, much of the popular paranormal fiction on YA shelves seems to be almost exclusively targeted at female audiences.
Teenage boys, however, can be thankful Catherine Jinks hasn’t forgotten them, following up her offbeat novel The Reformed Vampire Support Group (TRVSG) with another cool offering, The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group.
While the TRVSG was told from vampire Nina’s perspective, her latest novel is told through the eyes of 13-year-old Toby, who learns the hard way that his onset of hormones has also brought on the onset of latent lycanthropy.
Jinks turned vampire mythology on its head (her Sydney-based blood suckers are sickly and vulnerable, and not remotely interested in epic romances), and while she doesn’t take quite as many liberties with her werewolves, she still stays firmly grounded in realism.
Readers of TRVSG will be pleased to see the return of Rueben, the werewolf inadvertently rescued by the vampires (while they were timidly trying to track down a ‘slayer’).
It’s Rueben who tries to convince Toby he’s a werewolf (after the teenager is found dazed in a dingo pen after the last full moon). Not surprisingly, Toby thinks Rueben and his friends – the motely crew from TRVSG – are a bunch of weirdos, and it’s not until he’s kidnapped by men with more sinister motives that he begins to change his mind.
The story treads some familiar territory of TRVSG, but from a more masculine perspective (and, of course, is focused on werewolves, not vampires).
This time around the tone is darker and the story more violent (hard not to be when the plot centres on young werewolves being imprisoned and essentially turned into cage fighting pit bulls), but it’s never overdone, and there is still plenty of humour to stave off any real menace.
The pace is also faster this time around, with the action kicking in almost immediately, and then ramping up once Toby is kidnapped – and starts to realise Rueben wasn’t a complete nut job.
Again Jinks keeps her story unashamedly Australian, which for me was a big part of the book’s appeal.
And no, I’m not a teenage boy, but I still enjoyed it. I hope Jinks continues on with this group of characters, as there’s certainly plenty more she can do with them. -
I love Catherine Jinks because she created Pagan, one of the best characters ever and the reason I learned that I can actually enjoy historical fiction when it's well-written, and I've mostly enjoyed her Genius series, too, but I found this book ultimately frustrating. I thought her new paranormal series was supposed to be an unusual take on the common YA vampire/werewolf myths and at least a little funny, but I found most of the characters annoying (especially the ones that recur from the first book, which is the majority of them), and only Toby and his mother get any personality or character development (though I will say, that I did like Toby and his mom a great deal, and I liked the role his mom played in the story).
The narrative was overly talky and repetitive (I can't even count the times Toby says things like, "I should tell you, by the way . . . " and "I'd better explain . . . " and "Before I go any farther, I should mention . . . " and so on). Little happens in the story for the first 200 pages except that two strangers stalk Toby, telling him he's a werewolf and he should allow them to lock him up on the full moon, which eventually wins him over for reasons I can't fathom. (Given that NOBODY turns into a werewolf in the book until the very end, and then when Toby finally becomes one, it's for about three sentences, off-page, no less, I can't figure out why he lets go of his skepticism as early as he does, though at least he does hold on to it for long enough to not look totally stupid.) Like Toby's mother, I would want some more proof that my son is a dangerous werewolf than having a pair of complete strangers sit in my living room and tell me about it. Like, actual proof. And given that they never present any proof, I would do as she did, and kick them out and threaten to call the police.
Basically, Toby's mom is the most awesome part of this book. She is the only character in the book who reacts like a real person would in the situations she finds herself and her son in, without appearing dense, negligent, or willfully blind. She is actually quite a great mom character for a supernatural book, supportive and realistic, and I wish we'd see more parents like her in this genre.
Enough action happens in the latter half that the book should be exciting, and it definitely had its moments, like when Toby's love for Jackass-style stunts and delinquent pranks helped him escape his captors. Some of that stuff was ingenious and true to the character. But mostly, I found myself skimming over whenever characters would talk to each other, and that's never good, especially since many scenes are dialogue-heavy. One character in particular had the most atrociously written dialect, and the others were all blank and kind of depressing. They over-processed everything, which could have been a funny send-up of group meetings but was actually kind of boring to read. The most interesting idea -- the underground werewolf fighting ring -- never goes anywhere, and that was a major disappointment, because it would have added some actual werewolf action to this novel. Mostly, other characters hint darkly about their past fighting in the werewolf ring (without going in to too much detail) to explain why they're so angsty, but the tension kind of fizzles when you realize that Toby is never going to experience this for even a second. The latter half of the book is actually him trying to stop the others from taking revenge on their red-neck captors.
Maybe I would have liked this more if I'd read the companion novel first, or maybe my sense of humor is impaired (always possible!), but this didn't live up to my expectations as a smart parody of teen paranormal lit or even as a standard action-filled genre offering. -
Couldn't do it. Couldn't finish it, even with a couple chapters left.
I looooved the first story. This one also had a lot of promise, but it just dragged too long in parts and that ending is just terrible.
For a series about werewolves, there was only a lot of mentioning about werewolves. The cover also is deceiving because the character is 13. I assume that they're trying to represent Reuben with the cover, but even then they should have represented that younger character.
There's mainly just some really bad pacing with this story. So many great ideas throughout it and I was perfectly fine with the beginning and middle pacing wise. You've got a few characters from the first novel coming into view trying to convince the main character and his family that this is what's up, and then Toby and his friends try to prank Reuben, more info comes from this, and then they meet again later.... but then it just keeps dragging. Frankly I saw the problem leading up to Toby getting kidnapped. There was just a filler chapter that could have been completely removed, jumping to he meets some people trying to kidnap him... but then what should have happened was that he skipped forward a month. Let him turn into a werewolf once more and live with that realization that YO THIS HAPPENED. It would have made that escape sooo much better, and even the wolf gang idea was an interesting twist. But when the last third of your book takes place in one location... there's a bit of a problem here.
I just think the main things that could have fixed the book are:
1) Just age up Toby to 14... seriously, it wouldn't have changed anything except that high school age to make the story not feel like it should be a Middle Grade. I know a 13 year old and that kind of ruined the story for me.
2) Change the story for over 2 month time. Actually show him change into this monster instead of implying. Cuz frankly... I agreed with his mother. He was just being indoctrinated instead of proving a point.
3) Give Nina that same voice she had in the first novel. I was a little happy to see her back again (why I wanted to read the book really, to see her cameo) but she felt so much more like a kid in this than a 50 something year old back talking vampire who is seen as the kid from all the other vampires. I loved Nina and didn't enjoy seeing her just exhausted and talking about someone being sorry for what they did. Just a few of her lines felt really kiddy. But it was a fun hilarious idea to make Toby talk about the girlfriend thing.
4) Actually dive into learning more about the world. The first book felt special because they framed being a vampire not only as a "disease" but they opened up this big underground werewolf thing the characters didn't know existed. This one I think they were trying to play with zombies... but no understanding from the characters were there, so it fell into a "WHATS GOING ON?!" freaking out moment (with too many guns). They could have met up with this big American underground person mentioned in the first book and really dove into more of where werewolves came from. Or maybe Toby and Sergio escape and Danny could have been that person to explain more or even open them to that world of mystery a bit more.
There's a lot of options of how to grow this world and they could have framed it with "Is there actually a cure?". Cuz really... is there? That could have been a fun lead into another book or series of the younger Vampires and werewolves seeking out a cure for their conditions. Even if it's not a fruitful cause, they could frame it then like researchers trying to cure cancer or any other disease. "We haven't found anything yet... but we are one step closer."
Overall, there was so much potential in the book and just better pacing could have made me root for the characters more than siding with Mom. -
This was pretty entertaining. I liked the humor. So much humor. Love that. And it was a fresh take on the whole werewolf thing: Kids being kidnapped for blood sport? Interesting. Oh, and it was set in Australia. So that was fun.
Here's the thing: This book was written for boys. I bet pre-teen boys would love it with all the idiotic boy-things these kids do and the main character being a 13-year-old boy. Seriously, teenage and pre-teen boys are gonna love it!
It just wasn't for me so much. While I loved the humor I like a little bit of romance, older characters and a bit more maturity. Like, YA-style maturity, not Adult-style maturity, just so you know. So I just wasn't the right audience for this book. Because it was well-written. It was entertaining. It was fresh. It was funny. I just wanted a little more.
Sexual Content: None
Language: Moderate
Violence: Moderate
Drugs/Alcohol: Mild -
3.5 stars.
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Its already. I'd rate it about the same as the 1st book. Maybe a bit better. It's fine. Still a fun idea but not the best execution
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This book is so amazing I have really enjoyed reading it. I especially love the surprising near the end of the book. Definitely 5 out of 5 star rating.
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Nope. Not for me
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THE ABUSED WEREWOLF RESCUE GROUP is the second read of its kind for me and I have to admit it was a notch (even if only a small notch, a notch none the less) above its predecessor, THE REFORMED VAMPIRE SUPORT GROUP. Weather the mild betterment is truly due to an improvement in writing or has more to do with the fact that the werewolves were just far less depressing then the weak and sorely pathetic vampires, is a tough call to make.
Most of the original cast returns as secondary characters along with some new ones including a new protagonist; this time (if not obvious from the title) the lead role revolves around a young werewolf instead of a vampire. And so we meet Toby, a 13 year old Australian who is forced to come to terms with the fact that werewolves are real and he happens to be one. Not that he accepts this easily or without overwhelming amounts of evidence, but it hard to deny his... ahem, change in species once bad guys kidnap him for the sole purpose of caging and forcing him to fight other werewolves to the death. And thus the rescue antics begin.
Although not a huge improvement over the first book, the intended humor is much better received coming from the mischievous and newly “wered” teen boy’s POV, him having far less baggage then Nina, the gothy half-starved 52 year old teen vamp girl of book 1. But to be perfectly honest, I think my enjoyment of this read was greatly influenced by the novelty within the format of which I “read” it. You see, I actually read (in paperback) REFORMED VAMPIRE SUPORT GROUP and I audio booked this one and the added novelty of the narrator’s Australian accent just might have played a role in holding my attention. All in all it’s a decent little quirky paranormal series that is really geared for the teen and tween crowd, but if you’re over the age of 17 and are still considering giving this book a look, I highly recommend checking it out in audio format which is well narrated by Grant Cartwright. (3.5 stars) -
I read this ARC via NetGalley.
Toby recently blacked out and woke up in a dingo pen. While the doctors try to determine whether or not Toby has epilepsy and his mother interrogates him about drug use, Toby receives a letter from a priest who has a totally different theory about Toby's blackout: he's a werewolf.
At first Toby and his mother think the priest and his friend Reuben (who also claims to be a werewolf) are crazy. Toby and his two friends go out of their way to capture Reuben's crazy theory on film, but during all the pranks Toby begins to think he might actually be a werewolf. He meets a group of people who claim to rescue werewolves, such as Reuben, who had been kept locked up as part of the lucrative world of werewolf fighting. Toby is still skeptical, until a couple of fake police officers kidnap him and lock him in a cell too.
This began as a funny tale of a teenage boy trying to deal with being a werewolf, then turned into a thriller as Toby tries to escape. I liked the lighter tone of the beginning and wished it had continued throughout, but unfortunately the werewolves are all pretty aggressive and for the last half of the novel it seemed like they were all just running around and yelling at each other. I haven't read the companion novel,
The Reformed Vampire Support Group, but I don't think it's necessary to read this book, as the werewolves are the focus and the vampires are mostly thrown in toward the end. The cover, also, seems too dark for this type of book, because even amidst all the shouting it didn't feel as serious and dark as this cover suggests. However, I liked Toby, and Reuben (then again, I do have a soft spot for werewolves). -
This probably deserves 3.5 stars, I enjoyed it more than average but it didn't wow me. I'm not very consistent in my star ratings...
I read this rather quickly for me and I enjoyed the idea but I wasn't thrilled with the main character and just before the actual excitement started half way or more through the book I found myself wondering what the point of this was. I didn't want to follow the adventures of a 13 year old in pulling pranks and making messes, I wanted to know about werewolves!
After the kidnapping things got more exciting and Toby changed as a person and was less...whatever he was that didn't really grab me. And since I didn't particularly care for his personal life much of the book was kind of blah but well written.
I wanted to know more about Reuben, I wanted to know more about being a werewolf. But I guess they don't really know what it's like, it seems to cause amnesia. Apparently it's better than being a vampire though. I caught on that the people must be from another book before too long but this wasn't marked as part of a series or anything and I don't think I'd know any more about things if I'd read it first. If Reuben's rescue from the tank is included in the other book that might make it worth picking up. If I have to read 200 pages of a whiny vampire girl complaining about how sick she is it might not be worth it. Nina didn't seem particularly like a whiner, but Toby did say he didn't interact with vampires since they complain a lot.
Not bad but it wasn't that great either. I never got attached to the characters, I would have liked more about being a werewolf, and the first half was starting to drag and seem pointless to furthering the werewolf plot. -
We meet Toby the day he woke up naked and alone in a dingo pen at the local nature park. He is in the hospital with no memory of what happened. The doctors are talking epilepsy when a mysterious note shows up on his pillow that offers an explaination. The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group is the follow up book to Catherine Jinks's Reformed Vampire Support Group. After leaving the hospital, Toby gets two visitors, Father Ramon and Reuben, who claim to know what Toby really is.
While Toby has a hard time believing he's the werewolf Father Ramon and Reuben claim he is, there are those who would love nothing more than force Toby into werewolf fighting (think super intense dog-fighting). Although Reuben tries to protect him, Toby is kidnapped and taken to the outback (the book is set in Australlia). While in captivity, Toby meets Sergio, another werewolf, and the two try to escape. When Reuben's friend and fellow werewolf Danny, an unusual group of insomniacs and Rebuen himself get involved in the rescue the action really kicks into overdrive.
Although it is a little slow to start, the action quickly moves to go-go-go pace. The second half of the book kept me on the edge of my seat, scrambling along with Toby and Reuben to craft their escape. From the time the time Toby gets kidnapped, the book reads like an action movie. Car chases, explosions, daring escapes, shoot-em-up scenes-this book had it all! Characters from The Reformed Vampire Support Group make an appearance too. And did I mention the zombie? -
Toby has accepted that on Monday night, he somehow got out of his house, lost all of his clothes and wound up in the dingo pen of a local nature reserve. Did he have an epileptic attack, as his doctor thinks? Did he do drugs, as his mother suspects? Or is he becoming a werewolf, as his new acquaintance Reuben claims? Toby's friends Fergus and Amin want to trick Rueben and his support team, but Toby suspects Reuben's right. He just doesn't want to believe it.
This book frustrates me, perhaps because these thirteen-year-old boys spend a LOT of time playing tricks on people who are trying to help them, and after a while that gets old. Toby seems smart sometimes, but he's clueless figuring himself out, so he feels like a very young character. The plot meanders a bit, and it seems like it climaxes halfway through and then disintegrates after that.
I haven't read the prequel to this book, The Reformed Vampire Support Group, but I like the idea of a werewolf support group (themselves with a lot of flaws) trying to prevent disaster. -
Catherine Jinks brings back the rag tag group of vampires from The Reformed Vampire Support Group in this companion novel focusing on the werewolves rescued by the group.
When 13-year-old Tobias wakes up in a dingo pen with no memory of how he got there, he and his doctors are at a loss. When the mysterious Father Ramon contacts Toby and his mother he tells Toby that he is a werewolf.
Toby soon faces the same fate as Reuben in the previous novel and is kidnapped and held for pit fighting. Will he be saved?
This novel can stand on its own with no knowledge of the previous novel. My only concern is the infiltration of a new zombie storyline at the end. -
The action is full speed, pedal to the metal. The motivations of the kidnappers are frighteningly plausible. I was working through escape plans and possiblities right along with Toby, Reuben, and the crew. I even found myself with a decent sized crush on Reuben...not quite sure if the author intended for him to appeal to readers this way...but heck, I am not complaining. I'd like to see Jink's write a paranormal romance with characters as strong and emotionally scarred as Reuben. ;p
See full review at:
http://vampsrus.blogspot.com/2011/02/... -
Quirky and fun, I liked this one almost as much as the Reformed Vampire Support Group. Toby was very believable, and I loved Rueben. The small twist at the end was good, too.
**The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group, rated ages 13 and up for language and slight gore, rated an even 4/5 stars. -
check out my review on paranormal-romancejunkies.webs.com or type in nocturen reads!!!
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Jinks' signature dry wit makes this book great fun to read.
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Audio - voice drew me in.
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The werewolf part was less interesting than the innate Australian-ness of the book.
Took forever to finish because it never hooked me.
Overall, well-written, but for my tastes...blah. -
This is one of the most disappointing books that I can remember. For a while, I really thought that this would get 5 stars, because it seemed to be building to something great. Then it just...didn't, and its flaws became more and more blatant.
To begin, I have not read The Reformed Vampire Support Group, so the fact that this is apparently very different doesn't bother me. And unlike a lot of reviewers, I didn't mind that Toby and his friends are realistically immature; I actually found their dynamic kind of entertaining. The fact that we don't really "see" any werewolves (since they have no memory of transforming) could have worked, if the story used the lycanthropy angle well in other ways (it doesn't). Likewise, the slow pace didn't bother me at first, but became more problematic once the story ran out of plot.
This is really two potentially good books combined into less than the sum of their parts. If it had been a relatively light story about Toby realizing that he's a werewolf and dealing with it alongside his friends, it would have been fine. The more serious story that starts about a third of the way in, about werewolves being kidnapped and forced to fight to the death, could have been gut-wrenching whump. The few moments of Sergio describing what he's been through made me want a book about him. Because Toby, while a functional protagonist of the first third, does not fit the new plotline, and telling it from his POV is a big part of why things falls apart once the switch is made.
(*** Some spoilers to follow ***)
The last two-thirds of this book focus on Toby teaming up with Reuben, Danny and Sergio, three other werewolves who were each imprisoned for months/years, forced to kill their fellow prisoners and are dealing with the trauma involved. Since this book is called The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group, I can't help but wonder why Toby is our focus; he gets kidnapped, sure, but he escapes five minutes after waking up in a cell. He becomes very whiny about not getting to immediately call his mom, not having clean clothes, etc., all while acting very dismissive of the others and their much more serious problems. He just writes them all off as crazy and unhinged (even Reuben, the best-written character in the story). To be fair, sometimes Danny and Sergio really are unstable, but Toby doesn't have any sympathy for why they're like this, and treats them that way even when they're being reasonable. Once he's escaped, he seems to write off the whole werewolf-kidnapping conspiracy as No Longer My Problem, and thinks it's insane that the others want to, you know, stop the villains from just kidnapping them all again.
In fact, for a good chunk of the story, Toby's biggest concern (aside from his own well-being) is making sure that the others don't kill the now-captured bad guys. And look, I get that impulse in general, but Toby's bad attitude makes this look less noble and more stupidly heartless: he doesn't give a damn about the people who were kidnapped as kids and forced to kill each other for people's amusement, but he's up in arms over the fate of Gary and Lincoln, who, may I remind you, kidnap kids and force them to kill each other for people's amusement. (It's not like the pair even have any positive traits to make them more sympathetic; when we learn a little bit about one of them, it amounts to "ex-con who may be plotting to murder his ex-wife.") It also doesn't help that I spent half of the book confused about the practicality of this dilemma: we made a big deal about not involving the police in werewolf matters, so what were Toby and Reuben planning to do to Gary and Lincoln? We never find out the answer, since G&L are sort of disposed of by unplanned circumstances.
Incidentally, after all that bellyaching about the villains, when one of them is dying, here's how Toby reacts:"So can I have the mints, then?" You must think I'm a bastard, the way I was obsessing about food at a time like that. But my stomach was growling, and Gary wasn't exactly a friend of mine, and there was a weird, dreamlike quality about the whole scene, anyway: somehow I couldn't believe that Gary was really dying. "Please?" I begged. "I've hardly had anything to eat all day..."
I feel like this says a lot about Toby. His biggest concern is always his own comfort, and he refuses to acknowledge any truth that he doesn't like. He realizes that he's a werewolf? Not gonna think about it. Another character wants to talk about his trauma? Toby tells him to shut up, because hearing it makes him uncomfortable. Et cetera. This could have worked as a character arc, if he just woke up and realized how self-absorbed he is, but he never does, nor does anybody really call him out on it.
And that's kind of the thing: the climax of the book happens about halfway through, which could work if the stuff that happened afterwards still mattered. We don't develop any of the characters or themes that we've set up, we just throw in a lot of bickering and a pointless car chase and some overly-complicated setup for the non-existent sequel. Seriously, there's like seventy pages of vampire/ drama near the end, plus extraneous talk about other villains who don't get seen or defeated. Many pages can pass where Toby is just listening to other people talk while contributing nothing.
I actually really hated the ending, in part because Jinks tries to tell us that there was character and thematic development, except that it's stupid. Apparently, the lesson Toby learned from this was about not being part of a "pack" and following the "alpha dog," like he did by joining the others to stop Gary and Lincoln. As a result of this, he is distancing himself from his friends, Fergus and Amin, who usually talk him into doing stupid teenage things.
There are so many things dumb about this.
1.) While you could argue that "going with the group" is a problem Toby has in that lighter first section of the book, he didn't go along with the other werewolves because he wanted to fit in or get their approval, he did it because his other option was sitting in the desert alone and possibly dying of heat stroke. Joining them was the smarter option. And credit where it's due, once or twice he actually does stop Danny and Sergio from doing something stupid, so him going along worked out for the best.
2.) Toby wanted to run away while the others actually stopped the villains from hurting more people. So Toby didn't want to do the right thing, and the moral he got from this is that yeah, he really shouldn't have, since it was inconvenient for him, personally.
3.) Like I said, I actually enjoyed Toby and his friends, even if I seem to be in the minority there. It's not like Fergus ever convinced him to do anything really bad, just dumb pranks and stuff. Just stop listening to him without breaking up your friendship, mate.
4.) This metaphor doesn't even work in the logic of this universe! It's established that werewolves will just try to kill each other on the full moon, so they don't have "packs" or "alpha dogs!" Plus, Toby still joins the support group at the end, which is the same group of people, minus one!
Which brings me to another point: because Toby doesn't actually grow, the ending in general is just...lame. He spent a chunk of the book refusing to believe that he's a werewolf, a chunk refusing to think about it, but then at the end he just...doesn't really care? His second transformation is glossed over, and he writes it off as "yeah, I'm a werewolf, whatever." Which is the biggest problem in the book, really. Lycanthropy is a fascinating concept. Once a month, Toby will uncontrollably lose his humanity and become a danger to even his closest loved ones. In this setting, people like him are also captured and horrifically abused. This has so much potential for interesting drama and themes, but Toby doesn't care, and apparently, neither should we. Heck, you could almost cut out the werewolf angle: if the villains were just abducting random kids for their blood sports then the main plot would proceed about the same. Batman tells this story better with Victor Zsasz.
I can think of SO MANY WAYS to fix this book. Have Toby grapple with these issues. Make it so that HE gets put in these werewolf fights and has to deal with killing someone. That, or downplay/cut him out in favor of someone else. For example: let's say that Reuben is our protagonist. He tries to convince Toby that he's a werewolf, and when Toby is kidnapped, he and Danny go to save him, finding Sergio at the same time. Sergio wants to help Danny kill Gary and Lincoln, but Reuben is there trying to help him through his trauma, telling him that lashing out in vengeance would just make him the feral animal that G&L forced him to be. Wouldn't that have been a much better book than Toby whining for hundreds of pages? I'd even like a less serious story where Fergus and Amin save Toby, since they kind of vanish after being main characters for about a hundred pages.
I really wanted to like this book. Now, I mostly want the publisher to hire me to rewrite it.
Some random other notes:
- Was evil, or did he help the villains by accident?
- Sergio found that he's a werewolf from a priest, so like, do all of them know about werewolves? Was this explained in RVSG?
- The narration often goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with anything. For example, Toby spends half a page talking about one of his neighbors and why the rest of the neighborhood doesn't like them, even though none of these characters are important. Things like that. It wouldn't have been a big deal if the main story was better. -
The story opens with Toby, a 13-year-old boy, who inexplicably awakens in a local dingo kennel naked, and with no memory of the previous night. His mother is obviously concerned when he awakens and hovers over him while he is in the hospital, only to have all of the tests come back normal.
Please note that I have not read the first book in this series and will not be doing so after finishing this one.
All of the characters in this novel—all but Reuben—make me want to throw this book against a wall. One of the most cowardly, stupid characters I've ever seen is Toby. It's true that as he realizes that he's actually a werewolf, his understanding and disorientation mingle and makes him irrational and anxious. However, his friends - Fergus and Amin, are of absolutely no help to them throughout the book whatsoever. They treat it as a joke, and Fergus is absolutely mind-numbing.
After a late-night excursion, Toby is grounded. What does Fergus do, with spineless Amin in tow? Come over to his house to make a bomb in the local park with supplies collected from Toby's house. Where they then spray a 5-year-old child in the eyes with whipped cream and are then chased by the kid's father. Both Toby and Amin seem to just go along with whatever Fergus convinces them to do - essentially, glorified doormats.
Teenagers can be really stupid at times, but this takes the cake by far. It makes them seem rather unbelievable. Sure, some harmless pranks with gross stuff in them? Seems reasonable to me. Making a bomb only a few days after you've woken up in a dingo pen, trusted some random people, and left the house after you're grounded? Yeah.. it's not really doing it for me.
Plus, Toby's Mom is quite literally the definition of word vomit. She'll talk over her son, his friends, the doctor, the police.. everyone. All the time! She never lets up. It makes you want to shake her down, and tell her to just.. LISTEN! to your son, anyone.. just for a minute.
Another criticism I have for this book is that it's horrendously slow. Practically nothing happens in the first 200 pages of this book. I felt like overall, this book could've been significantly shorter. The whole "kidnapping" and inevitable escape happens in roughly 20 pages. What do they do immediately after that?
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone at all. It has quips of humor but besides that, it's a drag to read.
1.5/5, rounded up to 2/5 for Goodreads. -
Okay so I see that a few people didn't actually finish this book so for those of you who are curious about how the book ended but don't want to pick it up again here's what you missed:
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I’ve been looking forward to reading “The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group” for a while now. I really enjoyed Catherine Jinks’ previous related story “The Reformed Vampire Support Group,” and was intrigued to see how she would follow it up.
“The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group”, however, was so much more than I’d anticipated.
It is the story of Toby (or Tobias), a teenage boy who wakes up one day in the local wildlife park’s dingo pen. With no idea how he got there, Toby assumes his friends were playing a prank on him, but soon discovers that his night out was rather the result of his rare condition: Toby is a werewolf.
Before I get onto my o-m-g’s about this book, let’s begin with the basics. Like “The Reformed Vampire Support Group”, “The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group” is a fun and exciting twist on the usual young adult paranormal fantasy. Catherine Jinks takes a genre that is full of plot and character expectations and turns it upside down (brilliantly, and with a lovely Aussie vibe to boot). Her characters aren’t those typical selfish yet counter intuitively perfect teens of so many paranormal fantasies. Instead they’re real: they think they know everything, they want to know everything, they’re confused, they’re lost, they’re uncertain, they’re just teenagers, but they’re also werewolves, vampires, and a couple of humans. Also, her plots are filled with action, held together by such a great narrative voice.
The only thing that slightly irritated me was that, having read Jinks’ previous vampire novel, I was already aware of the realities of the world and also knew the backgrounds of certain characters, such as Nina, who was the protagonist of the last book. Unfortunately, this meant that I knew more than the current protagonist, Toby, which is one of my pet hates when it comes to novels written in the 1st person. This was especially painful because Toby spent a lot of the novel unconvinced of his ‘condition’.
Despite this, I really enjoyed “The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group”. I especially love Toby as a character. He’s just a teenage boy trying to understand his place in the world. Which brings me to the point of my review.
Now for the development that I simply wasn’t expecting:
First of all, I feel like I owe you a little preamble: I have a habit of over analysing basic texts. I can’t help myself. Also, I have an ability to see the queer reading in almost anything. That said, I really don’t think the following statement is just my own delusion:
This is SUCH a queer text. In fact, I would classify it as a ‘coming out’ novel.
That’s right. It’s a coming out story, about werewolves.
No seriously. I know what you’re thinking. It’s a young adult fantasy about werewolves, but really, it is so much more. Don’t get me wrong, there is no romantic element to this novel, and it could just as easily be a coming of age novel, but it’s not.
One of the things I love about young adult fantasy is the way the fantasy elements are often used to underscore the issues or messages of the text. While often used in conjunction with other issues, the most common use of fantasy in young adult fiction is to amplify the coming of age story. We see this, of course, in Harry Potter, Buffy, etc. Basically, think of any story where the supernatural element becomes relevant as they are going through, or about to go through, puberty.
It isn’t difficult to understand why fantasy is such an easy vehicle for coming of age messages. Fantasy elements provide such useful metaphor for understanding the teenage condition. The emergence of supernatural powers, which (have you noticed?) always seem to appear during the protagonists’ teenage years, are easily emblematic of the transition experienced by teens and perceived by others during these years. The emergence of supernatural powers acts as an easy representation of the perceived potentials and dangerous boundaries crossed by teenagers, as well as the new responsibilities that they are or feel required to assume.
Yet, the discovery of supernatural powers, just as coming of age, is also about self discovery. It’s about learning to develop an ownership of self, as well as overcoming the difficulties of explaining that self to others.
And ok, I will admit that some of these factors tend to already lean me towards queer readings of texts, where such a reading might not be readily available to all readers.
In the case of “The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group”, however, the reading is just… there, waiting to be received.
I’m not even sure where to begin in explaining this, since it is so obvious and yet remains subtextual. Towards the beginning of the story, one of Toby’s friends asks him how he came to be in the dingo pen, leading, in a roundabout way to asking him if he was with a girl, or *shock and horror* perhaps a boy. Toby’s emphatic “Don’t be stupid” followed by “Just leave me alone, will you?” in answer to the question “Are you gay?” is both aggressive and then suddenly dropped. The topic never explicitly returns to the text from this point on, but the question remains, resounding throughout the book.
Jinks throws in a few stereotypes, which I can’t help but feel were designed to lead us towards a particular reading. For example, throughout the story Toby uses Nina as a fake girlfriend (we might even call her a beard…) as a cover for his ‘condition’, and while he initially seems ashamed of his love of dance, as he comes to terms with his condition, this becomes an accepted part of his identity.
Then of course, there is the actual development of Toby’s self identity. This is essential to his development throughout the novel, beginning with his initial denial of his condition as a werewolf. By the end of the book, however, Toby has come to terms with his identity (as a werewolf…) and we even get a coming out scene, in which he struggles to explain the situation to his mother.
The book finishes rather beautifully with Toby’s declarations of self acceptance and pride, followed by encouragement to others like him, ostensibly other werewolves, to not be ashamed or concerned by their own condition. To quote directly from the last line of the text:
“Just because you’re a werewolf doesn’t mean that you can’t live your life exactly the way you want to.”
Admittedly, the supportive nature of the metaphor falls down a little when Toby explains that he has to keep his identity secret. However, he does explain the need to publicise the condition. I enjoyed this call to visibility, but did find it a little odd in a text which was essentially keeping the vital message hidden. Because, to be clear, none of what I’m suggesting is explicit, but neither, really, is Toby’s lycanthropy. At no point in the story does he actually become a werewolf, just as at no point in the story does he say he’s gay.
Maybe, yet again, I’m completely over reading this whole text, but maybe not.
If you read “The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group”, which you should, I’d love to know what you think.
