Red Moon Rising review

Description: Being only half-vamp in a high school like Carpathia Night makes you a whole loser. But Danny Gray manages to escape the worst of the specists at his school. Thanks to genetic treatments he had as an infant, most people assume Danny's other half is human. Which is a good thing.
Ever since the development of synthetic blood – SynHeme – vamps have become society’s elite, while wulves like his father work menial jobs and live in bad neighborhoods. Wulves are less than second class citizens; once a month they become inmates, forced to undergo their Change in dangerous government compounds.
For Danny, living with his vamp mother and going to a school with a nearly all-vamp student body, it’s best to pretend his wulf half doesn’t even exist. But lately Danny's been having some weird symptoms — fantastic night vision; a keener-than-usual sense of smell; and headaches, right around the full moon.
Even though it's easy to be in denial, it's hard to ignore evidence. There's only a month until the next few moon, and Danny's time is running out.
Peter Moore speaks to adolescents in a voice that will have them laughing, set in a world that will get them thinking.

My thoughts:  

Red Moon Rising was different than any other werewolf book I’ve read. Sure, it’s not new that werewolves and vampires don’t get along, but this book took it to a whole other level. Psychological terms are still swirling around in my head from this morning’s exam, so I think I’ll use some terms I learned (can’t say I didn’t use psychology in real life!). 

In Red Moon Rising, werewolves were treated as the out-group, and vampires were seen as the in-group. Werewolves are looked down on because they are not like the vampires. And the vampires have in-group bias. Meaning that they think their group is better than others, especially and more specifically the werewolves. This then creates a prejudice. One that, minus the supernatural elements, reminded me of our prejudices towards one another, whether it be the color of our skin, our religion, gender, etc. These parts of the story, along with Danny’s relationship with Julia were the things that kept my interest while reading this book.  

I do admit that I thought there would be a more exciting finish. In a way, something big did happen, but the story still ended in a way that had me going, “Okay, so is this it?” I definitely want to know what happens with Danny and his situation, but the book’s dilemma kept building and building to the point that I thought the story wouldn’t JUST be about Danny’s personal problems. It looks like a second book could involve a society level problem (like racism, or another problem that’s bigger than him), but I can’t tell where the story is heading. And if there is no second book, then that just sucks, because there are some lose ends that the author didn’t tie up. As long as there’s more to the story than this one book, I’m fine with reading additional books to get my questions answered!