Howling at the Moon by Karen MacInerny

Sophie Garou is an auditor living in Austin Texas. She works for a reputable accounting firm, has a hot boyfriend who also happens to be a rich attorney, and she is thinking about marrying him. But she also has a little secret. She's a werewolf. Or maybe it's not so little. Oh yeah, and did I mention her mom is a witch?

Actually, Sophie is only half-werewolf, because her mom is completely human. And her mom has a big problem. She was just arrested for poisoning a Congressman named Ted Brewster. How exactly? It seems Ted came to her mother for a Love Potion, to get together with a librarian he was pining for. Sophie's mother gave him the potion, but when he drank it, he keeled over dead. Now Sophie's mom is in jail, and even if Sophie bails her out, her mom is still going to be on trial for murder.

And that isn't the only problem Sophie is having. Someone is leaving packages for her, of wolvesbane, silver bullets and so on, threatening her with exposure as a werewolf at her job. Add to that an assistant who is jealous of Sophie's relationship with Heath, her hunky boyfriend, and who seems to suspect that Sophie is on drugs.

Which she is, but Sophie is actually taking wolvesbane tea to keep from turning into a wolf everytime something turns her on or pisses her off. She's actually gotten down to only having to change four times or so a year. But this year, both her boss and her boyfriend seem to keep scheduling significant dates she cannot miss on the days where she will be *forced* to change.

Yet, to keep her mother out of jail, Sophie and her friend Lindsey, who bears a striking resemblance to Angelina Jolie, decide to investigate Ted Brewster's death to keep Sophie's mom out of jail. Sophie hires her mother a lawyer, but her mother is more interested in the man as a possible suitor, even though Sophie thinks he looks like Danny DeVito and not Brad Pitt. And worse, her mom did an attraction spell that seems to have drawn a werewolf to Sophie.

Sophie has disliked werewolves all her life, especially since her dad, a prominent French werewolf, left them when Sophie was 2 years old. She's feared and avoided them all her life, but when Tom and Lindsay start dating, she is going to have to rethink what it is to be a werewolf... and whether being one is so bad...

This was a book I enjoyed immensely. Sophie is a smart, witty heroine who had me laughing my way through the book and through her various predicaments. Though Sophie is a big, tough werewolf, her problems aren't ones she can just "go fuzzy" to get out of. In fact, when she does turn into a wolf, the situation rarely ends for the better, as she is shot at by Animal Control Officers, forced to hide behind garbage dumpsters where she picks up fleas and so on. She is constantly teetering towards disaster as the book goes on, and it's made quite clear that at some point she will have to tell her boyfriend that she is part werewolf, because he wants to marry her, and any children they have will be werewolves as well.

The book also makes a distinction between "born" werewolves and "Made" werewolves. The former are the most powerful, and the latter can also be "unmade". The images of made werewolves in the book seem to be more doggish than actual wolfish. Of the three that Sophie runs into, one looks like a Poodle, while the other two look like other domestic dogs, only, of course, much, much larger. While the idea of a "werepoodle" doesn't exactly strike fear into most people's hearts, all three want to get Sophie's blood to inject into themselves to make them stronger, which lends them a definite air of menace.

While this might not appeal to everyone's taste, Sophie is a hip, funny werewolf who adventures and misadventures are both funny and suspenseful. I will definitely be picking up the next book in the series.