Deadly Hemlock (Hemlock, #1)

by Kathleen Peacock

Mackenzie and Amy were best friends. Until Amy was brutally murdered.

Since then, Mac's life has been turned upside down. She is being haunted by Amy in her dreams, and an extremist group called the Trackers has come to Mac's hometown of Hemlock to hunt down Amy's Killer: A white werewolf.

Lupine Syndrome - the werewolf virus - is on the rise across the country. Many of the infected try to hide their symptoms, but bloodlust is not easy to control and the Trackers are determined to stop those with Lupine Syndrome, at any cost.

Unwilling to work with the brutal Trackers, but desperately wanting to put an end to her nightmares, Mac decides to investigate Amy's murder herself. But the deeper she delves into the mystery behind Amy's death, the more secrets she discovers lurking in the shadows of Hemlock. Secrets that should have been left untold. Secrets that will change her life forever.

• ISBN10: 0857072110
• ISBN13: 9780857072115
• Publish Date: 5 July 2012 (first published 8 May 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[Ace]

Originally posted at: http://www.novelthoughts.org/review-deadly-hemlock-by-kathleen-peacock/

I usually don't really like Werewolf books, I find them cliche and often very similar to one another. The same with Vampire novels. Deadly Hemlock is anything but that (even if I didn't realise at first that I had read it back in 2012 I quickly realised it was a reread but I kept reading it because it still was interesting and captivating). Kathleen Peacock has developed a world where Lupine Syndrome has been spread over the United States, Werewolves are considered animals where they have no rights and are kept in 'rehabilitation camps'. Set five months after the death of Amy and a rash of killings by a white werewolf the story follows Amy's three friends when Trackers (or people who 'deal' with Werewolves) come to town after yet another attack by a white werewolf.

It's teenage angst, romance and confusion all rolled up with Werewolves who run around town unregistered while trying to pretend to be human. All the while Mac is trying to solve the mystery of what actually happened to Amy as she doesn't believe she was actually murdered by a Werewolf but it was only made to look like it.

I think the main redeeming quality that makes it different to a lot of the 'stereotypical' werewolf books out there is that a) Wolves aren't accepted even though they're known b) the ending actually is rather surprising which I liked. The entire mystery is quite well done.

What I didn't like? The love triangle. Ugh so over those. The fact that it is the girl deciding between the 'human' and the 'wolf' well not surprised there. It's fairly typical teenage angst/romance with paranormal bits in it. The Ending gave it the rating it did otherwise it floats around 3 stars for me. It's not great but then I didn't go in thinking it would be a literary masterpiece either.

Still it's a fun YA werewolf novel. I doubt I'll read the rest of the series though.

[nitzan_schwarz]

2015 tbr challenge

3.5 stars

Originally reviewed on The Book Babe's Reads 

Hemlock is one of those books that has been on my tbr for ages, alongside Unearthly, Shadow and Bone and a few others that blew up around the same time. I was always enticed by the general love my friends had for it--but the actual summary didn't really compel me to pick it up immediately. 

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I left it feeling very confused - did I like this book?? Didn't I like this book???

I swear to god, I can't decide.

I mean, it's not a bad book. It's not a bad story. But at the same time I feel like I spent more time wishing I could just fast forward to the moment Jason's eyes are finally opened, Mac would finally clue it to what everyone but her already knows and exasperated at Kyle's righteous self torture than actually enjoying the plot.

So, basically, I kind of... wanted it to be a completely different story? A feeling that was consistent until the very end of the story, as I wished for a completely different ending as well.

Can you understand my uncertainty? I didn't dislike the book, but at the same time can I say I liked it...?

Also, I was very annoyed with the "romance". Mostly because we are told Kyle and Mac are best friends, right? They have this entire huge history that we never got to experience and their whole relationship is based on feelings that sprang from that history. And yet, I didn't feel like they knew each other so well or were such great friends or were in love for a long while or anything.

So basically - the book tells us they're in love, but I never once felt it.

Not to mention the love-triangle that you can see coming from a country away but still manages to smack you in the head with the whhhy-ness of it.

So, yes, I have complaints, but as you can see - the rating I gave this book is still pretty good. It's because that this book flies by, and I can definitely see most of you guys enjoying it to the fullest. I'm just kind of over a lot of the themes and tropes in this book.

[jnikkir]

3.5 stars

[Kelsenator]

Originally posted on my blog Kelsey's Cluttered Bookshelf

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this book up, but was I ever glad it was about werewolves! I haven’t read one of those types of books in ages, and I was definitely psyched to see where this author took it.

It starts out with Mac’s best friend dying at the hands of a white werewolf. The werewolves has become common knowledge to the public 12 years earlier, and the Lupin Syndrome was considered a disease. Anyone bitten or confirmed to have it were shipped off to camps, which were rumoured to be horrible. Their rights were stripped away and they were treated like animals.

Dealing with the death of her friend, Mac is haunted by dreams she has of Amy blaming her for things and sometimes just being her normal self like she was before. She wants to stop the dreams, and she decides that the only way to have closure is to find out how she died and the wolf that did it. Amy’s boyfriend Jason is handling it even worse, creating trouble and drinking and making an alliance with the wrong crowd.

The Trackers, those who hunt werewolves, come into town after the attacks start up again and try to rally everyone together. They are known for their cruelty, and they can even drag someone away without even fully confirming if they have LS or not. When Jason decides to join to get revenge for Amy, Mac tries to talk him out of it but he won’t listen. When someone close to her is discovered as being a werewolf, she does her best to protect them, even if it involves her lying to those she loves and getting hurt in the process.

Everything is falling apart for Mac, but she still keeps going strong to find clues about what happened, even when just about everyone she knows is lying to her.

This was a great debut book for the author, I loved how there were werewolf scenes, but it talked so much about them as people and showed the injustice of how they were being treated. What they were was out of their control. And the interactions between the characters and all the emotion that went on kept me reading this book non-stop. Mac I have to admit was dense sometimes, but she had other things on her mind at the time as well.

If you love werewolves definitely give this book a try! I definitely can’t wait to see where the author takes the rest of the series!

[Amber]

Amazing. Brilliant. Superb.

Bloody hell, Kyle!

----

Deadly Hemlock came so, so close to being an All Time Favourite read. Everything about it was fantastic, and I fell in love with it just a few chapters in. I think this book is one of those that I will want to reread once a year, like Vampire Academy, Soul Screamers and Harry Potter.

I loved the whole idea of the werewolf virus that was infecting people from all over the United States. The idea of deadly werewolves - as opposed to the fluffy, cuddly ones - was brilliant, and while not ALL werewolves were bad, some suffered from bloodlust which made them go a bit crazy. If discovered to be a werewolf, the person is shipped off to a rehab facility where they will stay until they die. This part was particularly chilling, because you hear rumours about what goes on in those camps.

I am dying to learn more about the lupine syndrome and the origins of it, and I hope that the author dives into that in the sequel. I also want to know more about the rehab facilities and what exactly goes on in those. This book did cover some of those aspects, but I am hoping both points will be fully fleshed out in the future!

The main character, Mac, was a badass who looked after her friends. She had, in my eyes, an awesome background that was so, so interesting. Again, I am wondering if we will learn more about that in the future?

There was a love triangle in this book involving two guys and the main character, and I didn't really mind this, despite Mac being totally ignorant for most of the book. I just wanted to hit her over the head with a Twilight novel and hope that she would get it. Alas, she did not, and she stayed clueless until the last few chapters. I am a little worried as to how the love triangle will play out in the next book, because I have a strong preference on which guy I want her to end up with and I am biting my nails in anticipation.

I was totally obsessing over this book while I was reading it and for a long while after. I couldn't put it down! The action scenes were by far my favourite parts of the book. I had to keep rereading them because they were so thrilling and I couldn't breathe the first time around.

Overall, as you can see, I adored this book. With the badass characters, awesome bad guys and evil werewolves, it will definitely have a place on my favourites shelf even if I didn't rate it an All Time Favourite.

[Suz @ Bookish Revelations]

Hemlock is a sizzling debut paranormal mystery brimming with intrigue and daring originality in plot detail. It's incredibly thrilling and enjoyable, making it a fun paranormal read. The imagery and descriptive writing style is stunning and amazingly captivating. Kathleen Peacock delivers a wonderfully likable heroine that readers will fall in love with and cheer on. There's also a tantalizing love triangle that adds attractive appeal to the novel. The best thing about it is that it doesn't overtake the main objective of the story and is handled really well.

Mac is strong, level-headed, and independent for all she's had to endure in her life. She's had it pretty tough and readers will be able to sympathize with her. She's grown up without a mother, a virtually non-existent wayward father, and is currently living with an older cousin. Mac seems to have a knack for making some pretty good decisions and keep a good head on her shoulders. She's loyal to a fault and is extremely protective of those she cares a great deal about.

As awesomely kickass as she is, she still has a few flaws of her own. One of them being, that she makes it hard for people to get too close to her and chooses more often to keep them at arm’s length. She's also dealing with the nightmares of Amy's death that have been plaguing her dreams almost every night, since then. Mac soon discovers that she's in a world full of gritty violence and betrayal, filled with secrets and lies as she takes on the task of following the clues from the recent werewolf attacks and trying to solve the crimes in an effort to find out who is responsible for them.

Kyle has a secret of his own, one that makes him a lot more mysterious and the plot more intriguing, as readers get further along in the book. He's been Mac's best friend forever and once he reveals his secret, the two of them start closer and their connection starts getting deeper. The attraction that's obviously always been there between, but just never acknowledged slowly starts to make its way to the surface and things start to heat up a little slowly for the two. He's incredibly loyal and protective of her, but trusts her a great deal to share this with her. He might even be guilty of being a little emo.

Jason, on the other hand, is an incredibly complex and complicated bad boy from a rich and well-to-do family who feels extremely entitled. He's also Amy's ex-boyfriend and is pretty torn up about her death and dealing with it in self-destructing ways. Mac seems to be the only one who notices the good qualities about, but it makes it really hard for others to see it. Readers will either like him or not, but they will at least sympathize with him a little bit. He hates everything about werewolves and joins the Trackers, a militant group that are trained to hunt and kill werewolves. This pretty much puts both him and Mac at odds with one another, but she still helps him when he needs it even though his decisions aren't necessarily the best.

The Lupine Syndrome was an interesting element added to the plot, giving a unique twist to the story of werewolves. I personally enjoyed that like the vampires in Charlaine Harris's world, the werewolves in Hemlock were out and public, yet some of them still tried to hide themselves and there was a wealth of information on them with the CDC and various other resources. Those individuals who are infected by the virus are supposed to report themselves to the government and are then forced to live out the rest of their lives in internment camps. As much as I personally enjoyed this aspect of the story, I wish that there had been a little more of the werewolves in it. I would have liked to have seen a little less of the strong militant, brutal, and violent tendencies of the Tracker's that had everyone fearful of how powerful they were and a little more werewolves. That is just a small minor quibble that I had with the book and not one that's big enough to really change the rating.

Hemlock is brimming with dangerous twists and turns, unexpected suspense that will have readers on the edge of their seats, and intriguing mystery. It's filled with wonderful subtle romance, lies, and egregious betrayal that are not expected. The ending is sure to keep readers voraciously awaiting the sequel. Kathleen Peacock shines with a stunning new debut that will surely set the bar for all werewolf tales to follow. The originality shining through is full of so much wow; the story just pops off the pages and comes to life.