I have a fairly simple requirement when I pick up a werewolf book: I want the werewolves to actually be monsters.
Not brooding supernatural boyfriends. Not an excuse for a romance involving mates, destiny and somebody growling possessively every three pages. I want claws, teeth, bad decisions and people having a genuinely terrible time when the moon comes out.
High Moor delivered that.
This is proper werewolf horror. It is violent, sometimes gruesome, and doesn’t try to make its creatures attractive. There is something much more unsettling about a werewolf story when becoming one feels like a curse rather than an upgrade.
What I particularly liked was the atmosphere. There is a roughness to the story that suited it. It isn’t elegant gothic horror with beautiful monsters wandering around dramatically in the moonlight. These things are dangerous, and when the violence starts, Reynolds doesn’t make it pretty.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Chris Barnes, and his Scottish accent added enormously to the experience for me. It gave the narration the kind of rough, distinctly British character that the story needed and provided the immersion I was looking for. This was one of those cases where the narrator didn’t simply read the book – his voice became part of how I remember it.
I tore through it remarkably quickly. There were a few places where I thought the story could have been tighter, which is probably what kept it at four stars rather than five for me, but I was never bored.
And perhaps the clearest indication that it worked: almost immediately afterwards I started Moonstruck, the second book.
For anyone looking for a werewolf novel that belongs firmly on the horror shelf rather than the paranormal-romance shelf, High Moor is very much worth a look.
4/5