“My view is, we’re not on a map.”

53. Human Prey – L.D. Pierce

Maria’s got some troubles with the men in her life. Her boyfriend Todd seems a little volatile and is definitely jealous of her friendship with her lifelong friend Lance, whose one true love is the woods, and her father’s anthropology pursuits seem to have brutally embarrassed and scared her at some point in the past. She doesn’t like to see him engaged in any work with his area of shapeshifters and cultures with human to animal transformations, for foreshadowing purposes. They also live right next to the woods and Maria sees and freaks out about a large animal that really seems to be looking directly at her.

Maria freaks out a lot and is consistently weak at the knees like she’s about to fall over, so not really your proactive heroine type. It seems that everyone who is involved in this situation noticed that because she’s really not being told much and instead Todd and Lance are both kind of hanging it over her head that they talked to her father when she didn’t want them to talk to her father. I mean, geez, usually teen boys aren’t bragging about that because of all those stereotypes about being killed for dating their daughter.

By the time the mystery is nearly solved, i.e. it’s not a werewolf and it’s not tied to the moon, we’re one small dog down (Racket, RIP) and Maria’s made the roundest of melon balls possible for her cookout. The things teens are worried about in this story are unexpected at times.

 

Thorfy and Snuffy technically are good friends and prey animals, but sometimes Snuffy must assert her dominance and she’s more of a predator. If you’re a blanket or a cherry tomato, she’s a predator.

 

Northern England first…and only.
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