Reviews with content warning for Gore - For the Wolf

It's very rare that I realize how much a book is going to grab me soul before I finish it, but this one did. I am absolutely astounded at this beautiful story, and cannot wait for the sequel

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folded_between_pages_of_books's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

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looseleafellie's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

For the Wolf follows Red, a princess who is destined to go into the Wilderwood to be claimed by the Wolf in order to save her kingdom’s captured gods. But upon arriving, she realizes that a lot of what she’s been told is a lie, and now she must use her dangerous magic to help save the Wilderwood and her loved ones …

This book starts off slow, but it builds up into a fantastically atmospheric and gripping read! I’m OBSESSED with Red and Eammon’s relationship, and Red’s sister Neve really grew on me despite all her gaslighting, gatekeeping, and girlbossing 😄 I also loved Fife and my aroace queen Lyra!

You’d have thought this was a Little Red Riding Hood retelling from the, uh, everything about it, but actually it’s much more like Beauty and the Beast, complete with a library! BatB retellings can sometimes verge into questionable territory with the captivity aspect, but I actually loved the way For the Wolf handles consent and makes it clear that Red is staying in the Wilderwood because she wants to (hilariously, the titular Wolf keeps trying to send her back home and she’s having none of it 😂).

If you’re looking for an atmospheric read with a slow build, romance, and magic, this one’s for you!

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lhisalisa21's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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tiitu's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

FOR THE WOLF is a slow burn fantasy story full of magic and longing, built on wound care and vibing. Probably not a retelling in traditional sense, it has the bones of Beauty and the Beast, the flesh and sinew of something all its own, twisted and bloody but still whole.

The plot is there, technically, but most of the action is them running around bleeding or not bleeding or asking the other one to bleed or not bleed on something so it can do or not do a magic thing. Also there's only one bed, and some gestures at a love triangle that resolves itself with very little fanfare. If you don't like wound care and longing then read something else, as that's (gloriously, intimately) the bulk of the text. There's a larger arc involving Red's twin sister which is set to continue in the next book, and it has a lot of promise. I like this one, it hits a niche I didn't realize I was missing.

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wandering_not_lost's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This book started off well, with Red being a bit more grown-up about her situation than some other fairy tale heroines would be. It looked promising, but to be honest it divebombed by about the 30% mark, and by 50% I wanted to stop reading. I plowed through but the last half did not get any better.

This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, with heavy genre romance elements. I found it slow and tedious and overlong and predictable. I mean, just from the blurb my thought was,

"She needs to let the Wood in and make its power her own." And what was the answer, after many many pages of wibbling back and forth? Give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

Nonetheless, the plot moved weirdly slowly, taking a long time for anything to happen, and wandering into several asides that felt like odd sideshows when so much else was going to hell in a handbasket for the Wilderwood. Neve's story had the same issue: a lot of focus on her ignoring all the creepy vibes and getting drawn into a nefarious plot, but it wasn't all that complicated or interesting and took forever before anything really happened.

Even once the plot got moving, the incredibly inconsistent magic systems made a lot of the twists pretty arbitrary. Eammon wanted Red to not use her blood-magic on the wood because that was dangerous, but insisted that her learning to use DIFFERENT magic the Wood had given her was good and fine and safe. Why the difference between the two was never explained. The magic's rules are never clearly described, nor was it clear when using magic or blood would help or hurt. The Wilderwood itself seemed to change its goals and desires constantly - it would try to attack Red sometimes, help her others, getting magically closer to it would help or hurt seemingly arbitrarily, and even being able to travel in or out of it changed at several points in the story, seemingly just to throw up or remove plot barriers. In the end,

the Wood kind of just...changed its rules for no real reason, opening up new options, which after the characters talking about how "no, it's impossible" all through the book, felt very unsatisfying.

And the main characters themselves did a lot of dumb things. Everything from Eammon hiding information from Red, to Red running off constantly by herself, to Neve making dumb choices from the get-go and all through her plotline, to the end, where they go out to fight the baddie and promptly

split the party for no reason other than for Red to get attacked again

. Red's guilt over other peoples' choices got old really quickly. Neve's constant ignoring of every big, red, flashing "EVIL THING HERE, BEWARE!" sign was eye-rollingly obvious. Secondary characters largely felt disposable or their substantial contributions to the plot were skipped over or described off page.

In the end, I just wasn't sure what the author was going for. Gothic horror? Romance? Fantasy? It didn't really succeed at any of these things, for me.

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sarahblythe's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I really loved the spin on little red riding hood/the wolf that was completely done upside down. The grasp on the magic that is being used and the bloodletting was a bit difficult to understand initially but the author does a good job at explaining it.
Romance was well integrated into it and felt very satisfying when the two characters finally admitted the relationship to themselves. Also loved the split with either twin, one inside the Wilderwood, one stuck not knowing what had happened to her sister and the chaos that was slowly building up.

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