Daniel Morning is a shooting star. His grades are near-perfect, he’s popular, he’s even got an early acceptance into Cornell. But all of this was not simply handed to him. After a lay-off and a close call with debt, his parents do everything necessary to ensure Daniel has more opportunities than they had. A professional advisor is hired who pretty much plans out Daniel’s every move throughout high school, making sure he does all the right things, joins all the right clubs, takes all the right classes, so he can get into any college he wants. But his SAT scores just weren’t what everyone had hoped. So he cheats. Getting a note from a shady psychiatrist saying Daniel has ADHD, he’s able to take the SAT again, this time with no time limit, and it pays off. He’s headed for the bluestone towers of Cornell. Only not all is well with Daniel. For most of his life he’s felt like he’s just along for the ride while his parents and advisor plan everything out for him. His life isn’t his own. And now with cheating on his conscience, the confines his life are getting tighter and tighter.

Then he meets Misty Sandlin. Misty’s a stray at McCammon High School. She and her twin brother Marc, her friend Val, and Val’s boyfriend Eric are the ones in school who keep strictly to themselves. When the popular kids--and you know who they were in your school--pass them by in the halls, they do so with sneers and cupped hands whispering about ratty clothes or bad hair, seeing only what’s outside and never bothering to worry about what’s on the inside. Because to those people, there is no inside, it’s all about appearance.

Until one day Daniel catches a glimpse of something in Misty that speaks to what’s lacking in him. As the class watches a dog outside their school get hit by a car, everyone stands frozen and shocked, but Misty runs out, leaving the rules of McCammon behind to help the dog and get it to a vet as quickly as possible. Daniel, the shooting star, was among those who just stood by. Now he’s desperate to find out why she did that when everyone else did nothing. Why was Misty able to ignore the constraints of school and the majority and just do the right thing, while Daniel, the popular kid with the world at his feet, is carrying around such unwanted guilt.

Soon, after some initial distrust and lots of sneaking around on Daniel’s part, he’s accepted into their pack. And a true pack it is, because Misty and her friends have discovered a field of Amanita muscaria.

“Sanskrit hymns written a thousand years before the Old Testament, praised it as a god. Warriors once drank a liquor fermented from its juices that made them fearless. They hurled themselves into battle snarling, slobbering, and biting their enemies.

Viking berserkers gobbled the mushroom caps by the handful, transforming themselves into bears. Druids had boiled it down to a salve that made them werewolves.”

And that’s exactly the effect it has on Misty and her friends. When they first let Daniel in on the secret, he freaks out, obviously, but then he sees with what freedom the others move about and he wants it. With the pack, he doesn’t think about college courses or cheating or the fact that not one decision regarding the course of his own life has been his. When the pack is roaming the city, they are truly free.

I wouldn’t have thought it at first, especially seeing the Dawson’s Creek extras on the cover, but there was something in this book that really spoke to me. Maybe it’s the high school setting. I mean, the reason so many high school movies are made AND are so popular is because with teens and adults alike, high school is a huge part of our lives, some of our most defining moments came in those years. It’s been over 20 years since THE BREAKFAST CLUB, but you know every time you pass it while channel surfing you stop and get wrapped up in it again. And so this story, werewolves and popular main character aside, connected with me in a way not many books do.

Author Kristopher Reisz had a similar effect with his first novel TRIPPING TO SOMEWHERE, but not as deep and lasting as I feel it’s gonna be with UNLEASHED. TRIPPING was a great book (one of the best I read last year) and one I couldn’t wait to pick up every day, but with UNLEASHED I actually felt a connection with the characters. I felt something I don’t recall having felt over a character in a novel in . . . honestly, I don’t remember the last time I felt anything like this for a character in a novel. But with UNLEASHED I had definite moments of pity for Misty (probably because I identified more with her outcast status) and moments of anxiety for Daniel when he was fretting over trying to figure out how to tell Misty about Cornell without making her think he’d been leading her on the whole time.

Reisz is a hugely talented writer and after UNLEASHED I’m on board for whatever he publishes next. UNLEASHED is marketed, I believe, as a young adult novel, but I’m 35 and it’s, again, one of the best I’ll read all year.

As a writer, I try to pay attention to how the authors phrase things, how their information is revealed, what author tricks they pull to help the story unfold. I saw no tricks here. Reisz is just a simple and straightforward storyteller. The structure of the plot is pure and solid, and I admit a bit brilliant. His characters are people I recognize. Even the way they talk is probably more realistic than any of the last dozen novels I’ve read. The fiction writer in me gets a little annoyed sometimes when I read a crappy book because I think why them, why not me, why is it I’m reading their book instead of them reading mine. I can’t feel that way about Reisz, he’s earned it. TRIPPING TO SOMEWHERE could have been a fluke, his one good thing, but one chapter of UNLEASHED and I knew this was a writer I wanted to follow. I want to see what he does next. No pressure, though.

Don’t let the cover fool you, this isn’t some Disney Channel tween drama where everyone learns a lesson and they all live happily ever after. UNLEASHED is an exciting novel with realistic characters. And werewolves. You can’t beat that.

Recommended: Yes