Prowlers

Reviewed by Me for TeensReadToo.com

After finishing PROWLERS, the first book in this series by Christopher Golden, the only question I have is why it's proclaimed to be a young adult read. I guess it's because the main character, Jack Dwyer, is nineteen--but besides their age, there's nothing about this book that would make it strictly for young adult readers!

Jack's life is pretty predictable. Ever since the death of his mother in a car accident that also injured his sister, Courtney, the two have run Bridget's Irish Rose Pub together, making it into the type of pub/restaurant that their mother would have been proud of. Jack didn't attend college after high-school, but he's part owner of the Pub, has a number of friends, and is basically show more content with his life. He's even gotten a date with Kate, a friend of Molly's, who dates Jack's best friend, Artie.

Life is good, until after their double-date, when Jack and Molly have been dropped off at their respective houses, and things get ugly really quickly. Kate and Artie are found dead--mutilated and brutally murdered. The cops don't know what to make of it, and Jack--along with Molly--are existing in a sort of limbo, trying to come to terms with the death of their friends and loved ones.

And then Artie comes back--as a spirit from the Ghostlands, the place where spirits reside until they're ready to move on--to warn Jack about the Prowlers. Prowlers--monsters in human clothing, a lot like werewolves but different, who prey on humans and who are responsible for Kate and Artie's deaths.

What is Jack supposed to make of this? First, he can suddenly see ghosts. Secondly, there's monsters roaming the streets of Boston, and he feels compelled to bring them to justice. With cops covering up the murders that are soon piling up in town (including a nasty dispatch of some security guards at Fenway Park), Jack has no one to turn to except Molly, his sister Courtney, and the Pub's bartender, Bill Cantwell.

A fast-paced, compelling, thrilling, and often greusome read, PROWLERS was absolutely awesome! Action, the paranormal, the story of love and friendship, all weave together to make this a book you won't be able to put down once you start reading. I highly recommend it, and can't wait to read the next book in the series. show less

Jack’s life gets turned upside down when his best friend, Artie, is brutally murdered. What Jack learns afterwards is that this is only one in a string of brutal murders, committed by the Prowlers, which the police are covering up. When Artie’s ghost appears to Jack, Jack is determined to stop the Prowlers from killing anyone else, but it’s hard to hunt things that are hunting you.

I will admit that before starting this book I had my doubts. I wasn’t sure that I would like it. But now I have to say, this is one of the best fantasy novels I have read in a while. It’s gripped me in a way I’ve been looking a long time for a fantasy book to – something that hasn’t really happened in years, excluding Twilight, Harry Potter and show more a couple other that I don’t consider to be the same sort of fantasy. (They are almost more cotton candy ish, while Prowlers feels more like a meat and potatoes book. Yes, I may be hungry whilst writing this, hence the comparisons to food.) I’ve been looking for this kind of fantasy book for a long time. I had a very hard time putting this book down right from the first sentence, all the way through until the last sentence. It was action-packed from the start, and there’s never a dull moment.

The Prowlers themselves were . . . intriguing to say the least.

“They’re not werewolves, bro. I told you that. They’re Prowlers. These things have been around since the beginning of time. They can look human, but they were never human beings. They started out as animals, and that’s what they’ll always be.”

And vicious animals at that. But I have to admit that I totally enjoyed the parts of the book about the Prowlers more than the parts revolving around Jack & co. While the Prowlers in this book are not werewolves, they may have been what inspired the werewolf myth. And, again excluding Harry Potter, this may be the first time I’ve enjoyed something werewolfish in a book.

I am very excited to read the rest of the books in the series, as well as discovering more of Golden’s work. show less

This is the first book in the Prowlers series. I liked the book it casts the 'werewolf' new again. It's a fairly good story and it moves right along.

Jack Dwyer's life is about to change, his best friend Artie is murdered. His friend comes back as a ghost and tells him who did it, the scary and really hard to believe part comes when Artie tells him it was werewolves. They are a breed of predator that has evolved to be able to blend in with their preferred prey, humans. Now Jack is going to try to find his friends murderer and by doing so he marks himself and his family as prey.