Scan barcode
A review by wandering_not_lost
For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten
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.
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,
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,
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
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood
Minor: Gore