Title: This Time Around – A Canadian Werewolf Story
Author: Mark Leslie
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: February 16, 2013
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: 70 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Blurb:
Caught Between the Moon and New York City
Being a werewolf isn’t all about howling at the moon.
Or running carelessly through boundless fields feeling the wind in your fur.
Not when you live in the most populous city in the US.
For Michael Andrews, a Canadian living in Manhattan and afflicted with lycanthropy, there are odd side effects to being a werewolf in the middle of a bustling metropolis.
Such as waking up naked in Battery Park with absolutely no memory of the night before as a wolf and trying to figure out why there is a bullet hole in his leg.
Just another day in the life of a man living with the odd side effect of his werewolf affliction.
(This 10,000 word short story is the original short story written by Mark Leslie that eventually inspired the full length Mark Leslie Novel: A Canadian Werewolf in New York)
Review:
Content warning: blood and brief violence. I will briefly mention the former in my review.
If you think you know what it’s like to be a werewolf, think again.
Humour wasn’t necessarily something I was expecting to find when I began reading about Michael’s adventures here, but it was exactly what he and I both needed. Some of the scenes were subtly humorous in ways that nodded at Canadian culture. While they certainly had universal appeal as well, it was nice to see the author acknowledge his character’s background like that.
The only thing that held this story back from a much higher rating were the typos in it. I can ignore the occasional grammatical or punctuation error, but they happened so often here that I felt compelled to mention them. With another round of editing, this would have easily been a five-star read for me. I loved everything else about it.
This was such a unique take on werewolves. The plot showed how Michael coped after waking up naked and covered in blood in a park after spending his night in his wolf form. Obviously, that’s not the ideal way to start anyone’s day, and somehow things only became more complicated for him from that point. I was immediately sucked into his quest for clothing and, eventually, answers about what happened to him the night before. The author went into the perfect amount of detail about what this sort of experience is like for a shifter and how many different things they must consider as soon as they revert to their human form.
If you enjoy lycanthropy fiction, definitely do check out This Time Around – A Canadian Werewolf Story.