By Jim Mcleod 
Moonsick by Tom O’Donnell: A Howling Good Read: Book Review
You know that sound a fork makes when it scrapes across a plate? That horrible, shrill, nerve-jangling screech. Now imagine that sound tearing through flesh. That’s where we find Heidi Mills, heir to a gated-community fortune, jamming a piece of her family’s sterling silver into a werewolf’s neck. The irony isn’t subtle, but then again, neither is the raw, propulsive world Tom O’Donnell builds, a world where the monsters are real, and the safety we take for granted is just an illusion.
Heidi, a high school senior awaiting her Harvard acceptance, faces a life-altering night of home invasion that introduces her to a lycanthropic virus, catalysed by two burglars, including the calmer Cam. O’Donnell portrays this pandemic backdrop with chilling realism, incorporating elements such as lockdowns and a Viral Containment Task Force that reflect recent global trauma and heighten the story’s tension, setting the stage for Heidi’s brutal personal transformation.
And what a transformation it is. Heidi’s journey is less about becoming a monster and more about shedding the gilded cage of expectation built by her mother and her polished boyfriend, Luca. The virus burns away the superficial. What’s left is a girl fighting for her literal humanity, forming a desperate, scratch-alliance with Cam, the boy who helped rob her. Their bond is the messy, compelling heart of the book, forged in survival, tense with mistrust, and slowly evolving into something neither saw coming. It feels authentic to the chaos they’re in, a connection built on shared terror rather than contrived romance.
The scope widens through Erik Balikian, a rookie in the “Dogcatchers.” His chapters are compelling, adding crucial depth. We see the system from the inside, not as a faceless evil, but as a mechanism operated by people who believe they’re doing the right thing. Erik’s perspective complicates everything, blurring the easy lines between hunter and prey. It elevates the narrative from a simple chase to an objective examination of fear and duty.
O’Donnell frames this lupinovirus with a chilling, bureaucratic familiarity. Saliva tests. Mandatory full-moon lockdowns. A militarised Viral Containment Task Force, everyone calls “Dogcatchers”. The parallels to our recent pandemic are so blatant they’re a character in their own right, the curfews, the gated communities, the way the wealthy insulate themselves from the crises that gut everyone else. Some readers might find catharsis here; for others, it might feel like picking at a barely healed scab. But to dismiss it as just a COVID allegory is to miss the point. This is a story about the systems we build to separate the clean from the unclean, the safe from the infected, the privileged from the prey.
This book moves. It has a relentless, cinematic energy that pulls you through its pages. The action sequences are visceral and thoughtful, crafting a hidden world of infected safe houses and frantic moonlit escapes. The body horror is grounded and ugly in the best way; this is about the shock of the change, the pain of fur splitting skin, the animal fear. It’s gripping stuff, the kind of read that makes you check the clock and decide, “Okay, just one more chapter,” at 2 a.m.
Is it a perfect book? Well, what is? Its ambitions are big; it wants to be a horror novel, a social thriller, a coming-of-age saga all at once. That boldness means it sometimes wears its themes on its sleeve; a character might voice an idea that feels a tad direct. But that’s a minor quibble against the sheer momentum of the plot. The pacing, which is essentially a strength in keeping you hooked, does mean that some secondary characters exist more as figures in Heidi’s orbit than fully fleshed-out souls. But they serve the story O’Donnell is telling, which is intensely focused on Heidi’s shattered reality.
The most fascinating friction, though, comes in the form of Rhea. A werewolf who isn’t interested in hiding or cures. She’s embraced the change, seeing it not as a disease but as an evolution, or a revolution. She’s the Magneto to Heidi’s Charles Xavier, a compelling argument for violent activism and embracing the inner monster when the outer world refuses to see your humanity. Her introduction divides the narrative in the best way, forcing Heidi (and the reader) to ask: Who’s the real monster here? The creature with fangs, or the society that created the conditions for its existence?
The ending satisfies while swinging a door wide open onto a bigger, more complex battlefield. It feels less like a tidy conclusion and more like an earned pause for breath, with the promise of a storm on the horizon. It leaves you mulling over the world, the characters, and their desperate choices.
Moonsick is a formidable debut. It’s bold, it’s nasty, it’s emotionally charged. It takes familiar pieces, the werewolf myth, the pandemic story, and forges them into something fresh and fiercely relevant. It’s a story with its fangs bared, snarling at complacency. It’s about a girl who thought she knew the world, only to discover she was living in a beautifully furnished cage. And sometimes, it takes getting bitten to finally break free. A tale with serious bite, and one that absolutely deserves to be heard.
Moonsick by Tom O’Donnell
28 Days Later for werewolf lovers in this pacey, pulse-pounding YA horror debut!
High school senior Heidi Mills seems to have it all. A popular (albeit conceited) boyfriend, loving (wealthy) parents, and an acceptance letter to Harvard (well, almost).
With her parents away for a long weekend, she’s about to host the party to end all parties. She just has to ride out the full moon first, which should be simple with her home’s state-of-the-art lockdown system.
But when two intruders show up to loot what they think will be an empty house, Heidi’s pampered life is shattered – because they’re not the only ones who get in.
One bite is all it takes for Heidi to be thrown into a terrifying new reality: the brutal world of the lupino virus that the privileged never see. Accompanied by the alluring boy who broke into her home, she embarks on a desperate race against the clock to find a cure before the next full moon. But in a post-pandemic society where survival is everything, the most dangerous monsters don’t always have claws…
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