Raven moves into her home in Yellowstone for research when she slowly but surely starts to befriend a wild fox, whom she ingeniously nicknames "Fox". From here on out we get to see the ups and downs of their relationship, how Raven struggles with whether or not to anthropomorphize the animal in her descriptions and we also learn more about the animals/plants of Yellowstone in general.
I've seen this book get mixed reviews and I can honestly see why. First, the good: the bond between Raven and Fox does feel genuine and sweet and I do really appreciate that she didn't exactly tame him and keep him inside her house like some glorified pet (which the author of Chakka did for example, except with a pet wolf). It's just nice to hear how these two slowly get closer and closer, how Raven tries to cure Fox's scabies, reads stories to him and sees his kits grow.
However, there's some stuff holding the story back. Most notably, the writing voice. At first I thought this might just have been my Dutch translation of the book (I always prefer to read in English rather than my native language), but after looking up reviews I saw that more people had an issue with it. The story is told somewhat non-linear and the author will often go on tangents on things that aren't really relevant, such as voles or other Yellowstone wild/plantlife.
I wouldn't have minded if this had occurred only a few times, but it's a consistent thing in the book and just not what the reader is here for. The reader is here to read about Fox's bond with the author, not random vole projects going on in Yellowstone. Adding more context is always good, but I genuinely didn't need to know a lot of stuff she was going on about. It actually felt like it was distracting from the main point of the book, the aforementioned bond.
I also didn't particularly care for the parts where she wrote from Fox's point of view. If you want to keep your story believable and realistic and (like literally mentioned in the book) don't want to overly anthropomorphize him, I'd have recommended sticking to your own POV only. Granted, these snippets are usually few and far between, but it just felt out of place.
Also, the author really hates (outside) cats. I'm very anti-outside cat myself as well, but I still love cats a lot. I get that they do legit damage to the environment, but the way the author almost wants to kill one of them using her gun felt a bit unprompted. I don't think cats should be outside without human supervision and guidance (though most of these were actually feral cats, not cats someone simply keeps outside), but at the same time the way the author lashes out at them just made me a bit uncomfortable.
So, yeah, a generally good read, however, the writing voice and these other points drag it down a bit for me personally (and, judging by the reviews, some others as well). I'd say, try to see if you can read a preview snippet online if you're interested. If you can get into the writing voice, I'd say go ahead and get it, but otherwise I think I'd recommend steering clear. My copy was pretty expensive (Dutch hardcover) so it may not be worth all the money if you can't get into the way it was written.
Rating: 3.5/5
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