Francesca Lia Block

THE FRENZY This is the first-person narration of the life of Liv, or Olivia, who had something scary happen to her when she was thirteen. Unsure of what happened to her to make her want to attack her mother after she brought home a dead wolf in a hunting expedition, Liv ran into the woods and didn't remember what happened to her. She's afraid to go on with her life or allow herself to get angry or passionate, because she doesn't want whatever she felt when she was thirteen to happen again. Her best friend is Pace--who is gay, and for whom each of them act as cover, posing as a couple for those who would care--and her boyfriend is Corey--whose relationship with Liv would be frowned upon by her parents and most of the folks in their small town because Corey is black. Liv wants to be intimate with Corey but she fears that she will turn into a monster somehow and hurt him or herself. Also, she feels that the woods call to her and considers them her special place, but she's been forbidden to go out there because the woods are the site of mysterious murders. Liv is afraid that the murders are connected to her somehow because all of the victims were related to people who teased her or insulted her. As her relationship with Corey deepens, she's also struggling to figure out her secret, and eventually she comes to know a group of wolves who are sometimes human. She discovers what she is through them, though she doesn't know what to make of it, and she's disturbed that the matriarch of the wolf family wants her to kill her own mother because she is a wolf-killer. (Her mother wears a silver cross that prevents the werewolves from doing this dirty job themselves.) Unfortunately, when Liv throws herself into her relationship with Corey, she becomes more distant from Pace and isn't there for him when he needs her. He apparently goes to be with his boyfriend Michael. Eventually Liv has to choose between her passion for her boyfriend and her connection to the wolf pack, and it's not easy for a girl who's in two worlds. Back to Francesca Lia Block Page