Review: A funny, charming, good natured jab at high school paranormal romance
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 13, 2012
A new girl in town falls in love with a pale, cultured upperclassman who happens to be a vampire, only to find that she's equally drawn to another classmate who happens to be a werewolf. Sound familiar? Don't worry - author Adam Bertocci's warm, touching tale of high school romance is quite aware of the Twilight parallels, and while he definitely uses them as a way of playing with the phenomenon's reputation, thankfully, he has more on his mind than that. The world has plenty of Twilight parodies already, so it's nice that The Usual Werewolves uses its Twilight trappings pretty much as backdrop, barely drawing attention to them except in a couple of clever side comments. Instead, The Usual Werewolves uses its high school monsters to play with ideas about high school cliques, social class gaps, and the way puberty and life end up making everyone feel a little outcast from each other. Much like his earlier story,The Fairfield County Friday Night Gridiron Bonanza, Bertocci has a knack for bringing out the pains and the glories of the high school experience, and he acquits himself well writing from a teenage girl's perspective, something that could have easily blown up in his face but here turns out to be a solid and effective choice. While Gridiron Bonanza was a horror story set in high school, Werewolves is more of a slice of life story that happens to have some paranormal elements, and as such, it's nice to see how well Bertocci sketches his characters and brings them to life even in the tale's short length. Moreover, it's fun to see the usual paranormal romance tropes played not for high drama, but instead used for the drama of teenage life, and not much more. I liked Werewolves quite a bit - it's sweet, charming, funny, and just a general delight, and proves to me again that Bertocci has a knack for writing high school tales that resonate in a way many authors just can't manage to pull off anymore. Now if he would just write a whole collection of stories instead of these bits and pieces...