Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Wolfsong

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

44 reviews

dennisbnlc's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

4.75

So much raw emotion just spilled so beautifully over the page. Easily a contender for Best BOTY.

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nickoliver's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad fast-paced

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

So, I don’t really know how to rate this book. The vast majority of it worked for me to an extreme degree. I should’ve been able to give it 5 stars, easily. I literally shouldn't be hesitating at all. There is really only one thing that stops me from doing it. However, that one thing is such a huge reason that it complicates everything.

I knew very early in the book that it was going to absolutely destroy me. I read 34 pages on the first day and could already tell that it was going to leave me feeling scrubbed raw, vulnerable, and emotionally drained. Already, I was absolutely terrified of characters dying - which I knew was going to happen just by looking at the synopsis. It was immediately clear that the characters were all very special, and that I was going to be put through the wringer.

Interestingly enough, the writing was very simple, short, and to the point - not at all the kind of writing I’d expect to be devastating me. You’d think based on my emotions, it would be beautiful and stunning à la The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, but it really wasn’t? There was a lot of “I said” and “He said” and “She said”, but it was precisely that simplicity that worked for me and ramped up the emotions. It also fit Ox’s character very well, because he didn’t seem the type to waste words to describe what he felt and wanted. Klune’s way of formatting the story emphasised that. More often than not, he would only put one sentence on a line before going to the next, so it looked a little bit like this:

My father wouldn’t have understood this. The wolves. The pack. My place with them. He wouldn’t have understood any of it.
Not really.
He would have given me shit for it.
Tried to take it away.
My father hadn’t been a good man.
I knew that now.
He’d spoken in indifference and callousness.
In rage and violence.
But I’d loved him anyway, because I was his son.
And he was my father.

Admittedly, that kind of writing could be a bit of a challenge for some people. It could make it look a bit pretentious at times and feel a bit choppy. But like I said, it worked for me. Plus, the book had over 500 pages, and this writing style made it a lot easier and quicker to get through all of that.

The story was set over the course of several years. At the very beginning of the book, Ox was twelve years old, and it followed him throughout all his teenage years up to his mid-twenties. I was more used to speed and instalove, not slow build-ups over several years, so this was fascinating and interesting to follow for me. On the one hand, I liked it, because it built up everything very well - characters, relationships, villains, you name it. It had a nice pace that Klune kept the same almost the whole book. Especially the characters were very much alive and almost jumped off the page. There was also a nice mix between sad and tense moments and fun and amusing banter.

But on the other hand, the slow pace made the climax of the story stand out to me even more disappointingly. I expected more from it and didn’t think the story delivered as well as it could have; the action sequence ended quicker than I thought it would.

Still, overall, just based on the things mentioned above, I would’ve given this 5 stars in a heartbeat. I practically devoured this book - it definitely would’ve taken me only a couple days despite its length if I’d had the time this week to sit down for long enough. Like I mentioned before, I felt very vulnerable and raw the majority of the time. The characters were all very special, but not in a way that would’ve made them exaggerated or unrealistic. I was attached to them, especially to the attachment they developed to each other. The book featured a lot of platonic relationships between a bunch of physically affectionate people, and that combination - non-romance and many innocent touches - absolutely ended me.

However, I could not give it 5 stars, for one reason and one reason only: the romantic relationship. Quite frankly, I felt slightly insane when I read this story, because everyone in it acted like it was normal and not the most fucked-up thing I’d ever laid my eyes on.

The romance was between main character Ox and Joe, the youngest of the Bennett family. They met when Ox was sixteen and Joe was ten and immediately bonded, with Joe pretty much knowing from their first meeting that Ox was his mate. While they didn’t get romantically involved until much later, that didn’t make it any less gross. One, Joe was still underage when the romance bloomed. Did they truly get together or even sleep with each other? No. But with Ox just waiting for Joe to turn eighteen, this was pretty much textbook grooming. Considering us queer people already get accused of being groomers left and right by conservatives, I don't think we need to perpetuate that harmful accusation in literature, too.

Two, absolutely everyone in their lives encouraged their relationship and didn’t think it was gross at all. At the contrary, some of them said they knew it was going to be inevitable when they first met - when Joe was ten, mind you. There were a few characters who commented on the age gap, but they were more surprised than worried and came around to it remarkably quickly.

What pissed me off was that the age gap didn’t have to be this big at all. There was no reason why their dynamic couldn’t have been the same if Ox had been twelve, not sixteen, when they met. After all, from the very beginning, Klune emphasised how big Ox was, so Joe still could’ve seemed much younger in contrast. And I loved the characters themselves, so I just know I would’ve eaten up this romance so hard! But instead of being thrilled about Ox realising his feelings and them getting together and their dynamic changing to the romantic, I felt very uncomfortable and, like I said, very much insane at the lack of worry from Joe’s family. Plus, the smutty scenes were very hard to enjoy because of this, too.

Overall, while I loved everything else about the story - the bonds between characters, how alive everyone felt like, the relationships, the writing, everything -, the fact that the romance was literally a grooming situation ruined absolutely everything. And there’s simply no way around that.

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bel017's review against another edition

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dark

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

It was way too dark for me so I skimmed and skipped through the last third or so. Should have checked the content warnings, but I was in a bricks and mortar shop and I loved *Under the Whispering Door* and *House in the Cerulean Sea* so didn't think to look it up online. I can't cope with child torture, or parent/child death, or grief. Too dark. Especially after how hard I was laughing at Joe stammering about mounting.

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