Reviews

Young adult fiction about Lucas a 15 yr old who survived a car accident which killed his mom and dad. He has to move to the Lake District to live with his Nan who he doesn’t know.

It follows Lucas’s journey through bereavement, navigating his way through new relationships, bullying, partially coming of age story. It’s a tale of love,compassion acceptance and in a way forgiveness.

The common link between the accident and his new life is a wolf. Not totally realistic, but it doesn’t need to be to get the message across.

The writing is poetic, some wacky similes though.

Everything is not all neatly sewn up at the end which is good as it demonstrates that it’s on ongoing journey that becomes more manageable.

It’s an emotional story, which impacted on me more as I’m mourning a recent loss.

mazza57's review against another edition

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3.0

I listened to this book on audio. It was well narrated. The book follows the trials of Lucas after the death of his parents. Moved from the city to Rural Cumbria, bullied at school and struggling with grief in his estranged grandmother's home. The concept was interesting and some of the depictions of grief well done. However some competing strands felt unnecessarily complicated and did not add to the storyline. All the conversations with his counsellorfor eample, if one can actually call them conversations seemed to be just filling pages.

As a whole it was good but not a model of its genre

1librarianspath's review against another edition

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3.0

I appreciated the grief of adult vs child, particularly from the child’s perspective. I also appreciated that grief was shown as ongoing anger (and fear). I felt that the beginning and end were strong, but the middle felt a bit meandering when it took on not only PTSD, a large move, bullying, and isolation from others. I’m not saying this wouldn’t happen in real life, just that the short book didn’t have enough time to set them up. The wolf metaphor was interesting, but felt like the weakest part (from my purely personal opinion). Overall, it was an ok book.

henrytinker's review

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.0

I enjoyed the start and the end, but most of the book really dragged. I also didn't like or connect with any of the characters, unfortunately. Part of that is my fault, because I didn't realise this was YA and I don't like that genre much. Also didn't like how the one POC character in the book was so one dimensional and his code switching got played for laughs. Author also chose to censor certain curse words, but still use ableist slurs at various points throughout.

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