Mostly Human by D.I. Jolly

It's not your classic werewolf story in Mostly Human, a fantasy novel by D.I. Jolly about a young boy who becomes a werewolf by accident and learns how to live with his new changes in life.

Alex Harris is a famous rock star known from the band The Waterdogs.  While the world knows of him as an ordinary rock star, his life is anything but ordinary.  He has been hiding a secret since he was ten years old, a secret only his family knows and they do all they can to keep it that way.  In Mostly Human, Jolly takes us through Alex's trials as a werewolf and all the changes he grows through in his life, from teenager to adult.

Jolly gives us a new take on the classic werewolf story as we see how Alex is bitten by a werewolf, all because he thought he was saving a regular wolf.  Alex was only ten when we find out he was bitten, giving us more of an insight in what his life was like before the incident.  But at the beginning, Jolly brings us to Alex being interviewed during present day about his band.  I wish there was more of him in the present day and being in the rock band than in the past.  Yes, tell us how he got to be a werewolf, but would've liked to see more of him as a rocker.  But the pacing between the past and present was well done and some may have liked knowing more about the past.

Jolly didn't make the characters unforgettable to me.  Besides Alex, and the only reason why I really remember him is because he was the main character, I just couldn't take to any of them.  Nor could I find myself to really like them.  To me, it seemed many of them didn't have morals, especially Alex with the school secretary or Annabelle with the man she met on vacation.  

While the transitions between past and present were perfect, the transitions during the chapter were not as smooth.  Conversations came out of nowhere (Alex on the phone with his then girlfriend while right before that he was talking to his sister in person), or stories coming out of nowhere.  Why was Annabelle's vacation half a chapter?  I didn't really care what happened to her.  Mention she was on vacation and then end it there. 

The ending was one of the most confusing I've ever read.  I don't know what Jolly was getting at, but it made no sense to have so much action happening right at the end.  Perhaps that should've been part of the book in the middle, not thrown at us out of nowhere.

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars because while there was much I didn't really like about it, it had it's moments.  And times I really did feel bad for Alex, especially when all he wanted was to be a normal boy.

I received this book as a prize on a giveaway from Goodreads and recommend it for anyone who likes fantasy novels, especially those of werewolves.