Moon Fever by Ileandra Young | ARC Review

Moon Fever (The S.P.E.A.R. Mission Files #2) by Ileandra Young

• Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, August 11th 2020
• Genre: Fantasy, Romance, LGBTQ+
• Format: Paperback (eARC)
• Page Count: 303 pages
• My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

CW: speciesism from main character, ableist language from main character, blood, transphobia, sexism, loss of body parts, torture

I have very conflicted feelings about this sequel. Danika’s egotistic actions irk me constantly, but I am still very invested in her story. In Both Ways, her stubbornness and rashness often lead her into horrible situations. And now? Things are worse. With her team investigating in recent werewolf attacks, she is drastically overpowered by the edanes and yet somehow thinks it is a good idea for her to get involved in their conflicts.

For someone who has the highest vampire killing rate and is an excellent SPEAR agent for eight years, Danika is awfully bad at reading situations. Throughout the book, she fights more with her friends than with her enemies. In almost every situation, Danika manages to side with her enemies and argue with her friends right in front of them. I genuinely do not understand why she does that. And she needs to stop the Rayne-is-different-from-other-vampires kind of thoughts. This is just speciesism.

There are several amazing aspects of Moon Fever apart from the undoubtedly exciting and riveting plot of Danika’s misadventures. There is one possibly bigender werewolf Pete/Petra, and a sprite Willow who uses sign language. Also, Danika’s sudden period after its six-year absence is important to the story. When was the last time you read a book with menstrual cycles in the plot where it was actually relevant? Normalize them.

Remember how we knew almost nothing about Danika’s father in the last book? Good news is that we get the answer in this book. Bad news is that there are more unanswered questions. Judging by the ending, there is going to be a sequel, and I hope it would explain everything in this book. Maybe we are going to get more logistics of blood mania, too. And I need to know if Jadz is okay. At this point, I like her a lot more than I do Danika.

Early in the book, I got tired of Danika always saying “but.” It is extremely annoying because she always seems to fail to really listen to her friends who know better. Later on, Rayne also says, “But nothing. Why ‘but’? Why always do you have a ‘but’?” Finger snaps for Rayne.

If I were to sum up this book in one single sentence, it would be “Danika Karson whines about problems and her friends save her.” I think I am very close to root against her and Rayne’s romance because I like Rayne too much. That being said, I still believe Danika just needs a little more time to be mentally ready for her new job of dealing with edanes and relationship with Rayne. Hopefully, we will see her growth in the next installment. [15 Aug 2020]

I received an e-ARC from Bold Strokes Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.