Title: Hood Academy (Books 1+2 are published together).
Author: Shelley Wilson
Genre: a young adult fantasy-adventure, focusing on a school for werewolf hunters and a local pack of shifters.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Forward: I was given an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review! Hood Academy was released Oct 10, 2019 in ebook and physical format.
Mia watched her drunk of a father get murdered right in front of her eyes- that’s enough to mess anybody up for a lifetime. But what killed Mia’s father shouldn’t be real, it shouldn’t exist, she must be imagining the large wolf that slaughtered her father.
Yet when her mysterious uncle swoops in to take Mia away to some isolated boarding school, Mia knows what she saw was real. Her uncle runs a school for werewolf hunters, and she’s the newest recruit.
Mia should want to join Hood Academy and destroy the creature that took her father’s life. But Mia can’t help but look deeper into the truth about the Academy and her new friends, despite the threats she received and the dangerous knowledge putting a target on her back.
There’s more going on at Hood Academy, and Mia will discover what it is.
When we are pulled into Mia’s story, it starts with her watching her father’s murder. Instantly, we are drawn into the word of werewolves and hunters with Mia, feeling the fear and tension she feels. As we learn more about Mia’s deadbeat family and their ties to the Academy, we are just as curious as she is.
I loved the tension and thrill of the mystery that is Mia’s life and her association with the hunters and wolves. It gripped you from the first chapter and took you on a ride through Mia’s story with her. I loved the creativity, the twisted secrets, the light romance, the strong female characters- I loved basically all of it.
As we transition into the ending of book one, I felt a bit of a drag. I found that all the mystery and build up was lost, and into the start of book two it seemed the tension was replaced with mediocre dialogue and action. I could tell what was going to happen, and didn’t feel that the tone of the beginning of the novel was kept up.
If it wasn’t for that lag, I would have enjoyed this book so much more. The secrets were out of the bag, and Mia was learning to handle them, and it was slightly boring to read her be bossed around by everyone and lose her fierce streak.
I was glad that Mia has a well rounded story, and none of the characters were cut and dry. The action was full of tension and there was no “tame action”- aka “the hero wins everything with a grain of salt”. I can’t stand that in any story, even a young adult. 🤦🏻♀️
Overall, I enjoyed Hood Academy and would recommend this to my werewolf lovers. I loved all the content you get in this book, and I love werewolf romances with the perfect dash of thriller.
Bookish Bex 