A redhead with a drawl, a lawyer with pink hair, and a homeless seventeen-year-old have no business forming a pack. 
In a world where magic is commonplace, and your neighbor is just as likely to be an elf as a troll, three humans are unwillingly changed into werewolves. 

Unprepared and unwanted. 

The pack may have chosen Amber as their Alpha, but that’s not a title she is supposed to have. In order to be legally recognized as an Alpha she must pass the Trials, and it won’t be easy. If she fails, her pack will be disbanded and forced into a halfway house for bitten werewolves, aka The System. 

But the pack needs a sponsor in order to even enter the Trials. 

With everything to lose, the brand new pack must learn to work together before it’s too late.

Vain Lily Blackwood and her shy brother Silas wonder if their family will ever settle in one place long enough to lead a normal life. When a mysterious stranger arrives claiming to be their uncle, they discover their parents have been hiding a secret that turns their world upside down. 

The two are kidnapped to Nightfall Gardens, the family’s ancestral home, a place shrouded in ancient mystery, where they meet their dying grandmother and learn of an age-old curse placed on Blackwood females. 

Lily must take over as protector of the house and three haunted gardens that hold mythical beasts, fairy-tale nightmares and far worse. If she doesn’t, the evil trapped there will be unleashed and bring on a new dark age. 

While she deals with malevolent ghosts inside the house, Silas is put to work in the gardens, where one wrong step means death. 

Along the way, they search to unlock the secrets of the house and to stop the creatures in the gardens before time runs out and the world is destroyed.

Goodreads/Amazon

Why Did I Pick This Book?

Um, that cover of course! That cover says dark, gothic fiction. I didn't even realize that it was a MG book. I came for the cover, but I stayed for the story. Curses, fairy-tale nightmares, mythical beasts, ghosts? Yes, please! 

What About the Characters? 

I loved Silas' bravery. Lily was a bit stuck on herself but she grew on me. The "monsters" were creepy and splendid. The house was it's own deadly being — constantly morphing to the surprise of everyone. The staff was fantastic. I loved the housemaid. She was gross and funny all at once. 

Should you read it?

Did you like The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney or Coraline by Neil Gaiman? Then you should definitely read it!