There’s no way of avoiding the supermodel part, but Lou Kinipski (as she now calls herself) is no bleached blonde with fake … eyelashes. In fact, until her senior year of high school, Lou - then Sherry Billington - was a geek, and looked the part. Then she made the mistake of attending her prom with the cutest guy in school, and he tried to rape her. Much to Lou’s surprise and shock, she turns into a werewolf to protect herself. After that, she not only doesn’t feel like herself, but she doesn’t look like herself anymore. Not to mention, Tom’s gone missing, and Sherry-now-Lou has a sneaking suspicion his hiding place is her digestive tract. So she disappears to New York and, courtesy of her new looks, makes it into modeling.

Sherry clearly didn’t have the best taste in men, and that’s a trait that Lou holds onto. From the beginning, she makes it clear that she has a serious thing for one of the photographers, Stephan, but she won’t date him because he’s such a man whore. When girls fitting her description begin turning up dead - mauled by some creature Lou is the only one to realize is a werewolf - she starts seeing the lead detective on the case. After she cracks a couple of his ribs with her superhuman strength, he understandably backs off also. By the end of the book, she’s also started to get interested in her sleazy-yet-sexy private detective, Morgan Kane, who is one of just a few people who knows her true identity.

Kane was hired to find Lou’s birth mother, who Lou is convinced must hold the secret to her condition. He eventually tracks both Lou’s biological mother and her adoptive mother to a laboratory in Nevada.

The book ends without delving too much deeper into the secret of Lou’s past, which not only leaves the reader hanging, but indicates that a second book, at least, is in the works. A second one will be well worth the read; there is Lou’s past and the all-important question of which man will she be with to be examined. Don’t let the three men throw you off, either. This doesn’t ring of Anita Blake’s many lovers; Lou just has a problem deciding what’s good for her and a habit of not acting on her instincts anyway. Although she’s a supermodel, Lou comes across as very much the normal girl with your normal problems. In her case, this is primarily due to the fact that she wasn’t always the hottest girl in the world; but Thompson does an excellent job of giving facets to characters you wouldn’t expect to consider much, let alone the core characters.

This book should please fans of any of the authors in the paranormal genre, lighthearted or otherwise. It is fun, with a touch of mystery and a surprising insightfulness, plus a plotline that may meander but will keep readers intrigued.

--Sarrah Knight