Waxing Moon (Calling the Moon #2) by Sarah E Stevens

Julie is getting used to raising her powerful werewolf baby - and is still determined to do so alone, in her own home in her own town despite pressure to move to join the rest of the Pack

But when her house is burned down by a supernatural force she never knew about which may be in direct opposition to the powerful werewolf Carson is becoming. Can she assert her independence as a mere human in this world of dangerous supernatural beings fighting over her child?

In my review of the last book, I questioned how this series would continue after the events of the first book. I did suspect there would be some really convoluted way that Julie would end up being bitten and become a werewolf and then have many exciting adventures.

Oh how very different this turned out to be.

The conflict of this book is how much Julie gets to live her own life and how much control she has over raising her own son. It exposes a lot of the glaring problems with werewolf culture that have been briefly touched on but not explored in the last book

None of this is done clumsily. I mean, I would have frowned at this if all the nice people from the first book suddenly turned into hateful monsters. Instead we see it in their general attitudes, who is valued. Who is respected. Looking back among all the action of the previous book we see a lot of subtle or not overly flagged actions now from a very different light. Even how everyone is utterly fawning and excited over her son Carson; lots of little moments

And given how powerful Carson is, to Julie this is just all the more important why she needs to separate him from the damaging prejudices of a society that could have him absorb so

Again, it’s done really subtly, with the battle they’re fighting serving as a perfect background for people to make harsh decisions in the name of “safety”. It’s balanced to be very realistic - perhaps even something we could easily understand and go along with if it weren’t for Julie’s excellent insight.

This also brings excellent further exploration of Julie’s insistence of living her own life in her own town - but I think the best part of this was also looking at Julie’s extremely good friend Eliza. Loyal, supportive, passionate, determined, a good woman AND WRONG. Because you can be a good person and still be part of a deeply flawed, prejudiced system; you can be a good person and perpetuate inexcusable things within that system and being a good person doesn’t make it ok. That’s a nuance that is far superior to the simplistic narratives we see elsewhere

Dark Moon Wolf (Calling the Moon #1) by Sarah E Stevens

Julie is a librarian and a single mother with a newborn and just coming to grips with that. When, one full moon, her baby turns into a wolf pup.

Utterly confused she clings to the one person who may have answers – the father of her child. Only to find Mac is dead, murdered – and he’s not the first werewolf from his pack who has been targeted. And whoever took those wolves are now targeting her baby

This is one of those books where it’s a little weird that the protagonist is involved. I mean, Julie is human, completely human no special abilities, and she has an infant child in tow. Yes that baby has been threated and it’s understandable that she would want to stop this threat – but running towards it, playing amateur detective in a strange city with unknown enemies while carrying a baby along with you? That doesn’t seem reasonable or sensible. She’s not just running into danger like so many Urban Fantasy protagonist – but she decided to bring her baby along for the ride.

It’s one of the underlying issues of this book which can be hard to follow –the constant question of why the protagonist is even here. Why is she involved, why is she making decisions in this situation she knows so little about – it’s a perennial problem whenever we have a human protagonist in a supernatural book.

But it sits alongside a whole lot of things that are done so well. After all one of the minor conflicts of this book is Julie feeling so very out of place among the werewolves and the witches and being depreciating – without a huge amount of angst – in her own abilities, but still finding her own ways to contribute and help.

The leader of the werewolf pack is a woman. Yes, an actual woman alpha – and she openly pokes at the whole idea of a big hair man who would have to lead a werewolf pack. And there is a moment of girlhate with Julie deciding to make massive assumptions about Lilly because of her appearance – deciding she looks like “a stripper” and being generally shamy and contemptuous. But it’s all subverted by the fact she is the alpha and clearly powerful and capable and a more than decent leader. Julie’s prejudiced judgement are exposed to be exactly what they are in the face of her capability

And the main characters joining Julie in her mission to find out what happened to Mac (her ex) are both women – there’s Sheila her lifelong friend with her own supernatural secrets and Eliza a female werewolf (multiple female werewolves! It’s odd to say but this genre seems to have almost adopted a law that all werewolves must be male which makes this both so special and unique) with a lot of power and strength. In both cases – and with another female werewolf (another one!) companion of Mac’s, Julie does have moments of jealousy and feelings of inadequacy, thinking how much more attractive they are than her. But it’s presented very much that it’s her own insecurities being unreasonable rather than any actual fault on the part of the women. And Julie recognises it in herself as well and works through it.