Raised by Wolves »

Jennifer Lynn Barnes was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has been a competitive cheerleader, a volleyball player, a dancer, a debutante, a primate-cognition researcher, a teen model, a comic-book geek, and a lemur aficionado. She's been writing for as long as she can remember, and wrote her first novel, Golden, when she was nineteen.

Jen graduated from Yale University with a degree in cognitive science 2006, and spent a year doing autism research at the University of Cambridge.  She is currently continuing her graduate studies at Yale.  Visit her online at www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com.

Adopted by the Alpha of a werewolf pack after a rogue wolf brutally killed her parents right before her eyes, fifteen-year-old Bryn knows only pack life, and the rigid social hierarchy that controls it.  That doesn't mean that she's averse to breaking a rule or two. 

But when her curiosity gets the better of her and she discovers Chase, a new teen locked in a cage in her guardian's basement, and witnesses him turn into a wolf before her eyes, the horrific memories of her parents' murders return. Bryn becomes obsessed with getting her questions answered, and Chase is the only one who can provide the information she needs.

But in her drive to find the truth, will Bryn push too far beyond the constraints of the pack, forcing her to leave behind her friends, her family, and the identity that she's shaped?

Publishers Weekly

The paranormal craze has given readers several interpretations of the werewolf myth, but with a gift for thoughtful detail, Barnes (Fate) presents a fresh and fully realized world in which werewolves and humans coexist. Narrator Bryn, 15, has straddled the line between wolf and human for nearly her whole life, marked as a member of the pack at age four when her parents were murdered by a rogue Were--a Rabid. Callum, the pack's alpha, has been Bryn's hero and father figure ever since, but it's becoming clear that he has also been keeping secrets. When Bryn discovers Chase locked in Callum's basement--a human who's been turned Were, not born one like the other wolves she knows--a cascade of revelations follow, upending Bryn's secure world ("Books and movies would have me believing that any little scratch or bite could turn someone into a werewolf, but thousands of years of werewolf history said they were wrong"). Bryn's voice is sarcastic, exasperated, frightened, insightful, and tender by turns, and Barnes rarely lets her take easy outs, making for an exceptionally taut read. Ages 12-up. (June)