• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 7 to 12

Eighteen-year-old rock star Sam Lee isn’t like other girls. She’s the super-talented bass player and songwriter for an all-girl indie band and an incurable loner. Then one night after a concert in Central Park, she’s attacked by a “wild dog.”

Suddenly, this long-time vegetarian is craving meat—the bloodier, the better. Sam finds herself with an unbelievable secret and no one she trusts to share it with. So begin the endless lies to cover up the hairy truth.

When a new girl gang appears in the city—with claws and paws—Sam suspects there’s a connection to her own inner beast. Trapped in a tug-of-war between her animal and human self, forced to choose between the guy who sparks her carnal appetite and the one who makes her feel like a normal teenage girl, Sam has to unravel the mysteries of the werewolf world before her bandmates, the media, and her mother catch up to her.

Emily Pohl-Weary is an award-winning author and creative writing instructor at the University of British Columbia. Her audio play, The Witch's Circle, was recently produced by Odyssey Theatre. Her books include the YA novel Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl, Ghost Sick (winner of the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry), and Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (winner of a Hugo Award). Originally from Toronto, she now lives in Vancouver.

Emily Pohl-Weary's profile page

With teenage angst, a love quadrangle, a fantasy element that should be silly but isn’t, and a strong female heroine who is anything but a hapless damsel in distress, Pohl-Weary’s latest YA title offers a welcome twist on the paranormal genre - Cara Smusiak, Quill and Quire

The story is fast and superbly told, and the characters are fantastically likable and believable. Wolf Girl is a YA werewolf novel that's not afraid to show us the sex and violence of the wolf-story, not afraid of ratcheting up the tension and the fear, but still firmly age-appropriate. - Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

Emily Pohl-Weary's writing is evocative, ensuring the reader truly understands the depth of Sam's physical and emotional transformation, and her characterizations are explicit and fully revealing. - Helen Kubiw, CanLit for Little Canadians

My desire to follow Sam to some sort of resolution was fueled by stellar writing and a plot construction that is free of gaps or holes. The book stands above others in its genre because of the attention to detail. - OurFeministPlayschool