A review by melissa_renee
Hunted by Wolves and Shadow by Jo Holloway

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

I have never read any books by Jo before so I went into this pretty blind. At first I thought it was reading like a novella due to it jumping right into the story with minimal world building. However, on reflection that makes sense since it is a retelling of a fairy tale and we have a basic understanding of the premise. 

The plot kept surprising me! I thought I knew what would happen but the way she wove new characters into the story was really cool and allowed for the pacing of the book to stay consistent. She also allowed the romance to build between Wolf and Emi slowly (not too slowly) but also naturally. Yes, it is fantasy, but the emotions she went through felt consistent with how a real human might act. 

I was also surprised by the spice level being much lower than anticipated. I just assumed that because it was a retelling it might have a higher amount of scenes, but it didn’t! I was pleasantly surprised that spice was used sparingly and in context to the story. Really well done! 

The only thing that was odd for me was the use of very whimsical words in place of cuss words. At first I didn’t like it but by the end it felt natural to the story and it fit well in the “fairy tale” world. 
Oh and can we talk about the art work at the end? OMG! Gorgeous. It really brought the characters to life. 

★ 4/5 

Thank you to Jo Holloway and NetGalley for giving me this ARC!