Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads De wolventemmer #1: De wolventemmer.
This one intrigued me from the start! Let's have a look, spoilers ahead!
We meet Runa, an Italian-Dutch girl who on her vacation to the Italian Alps is met with quite a few conflicts. Her sister goes missing, and there are quite a few suspicious characters in and around the town they're staying at who might be involved. The local wolf population also gets the brunt of it, being blamed for the vanishing and hunted relentlessly. Runa soon discovers that she has a special connection to the wolves, and it's up to her to save her sister and make sure the wolves aren't hunted to extinction.
I had a great time reading this one. It wasn't amazing or anything but I just really liked this story. I love the familiar setting of a small town in the European Alps (albeit in Italy rather than Austria where I always visit them). I like the connection Runa has to the characters around her, particularly her sister, Vanessa and Taddeo. And I like how throughout the story she slowly figures out her destiny with the wolves. Also, there's a nice mystery being build up around the character of Barberina, the current wolf tamer preceding Runa, who takes over at the end of the book.
The lore surrounding the wolves is also interesting and inventive. There's normal wolves, but a select few of the wolves in this story are actually "wolfmen". They're not traditional werewolves or even shapeshifters at will, instead they are people who can turn into wolves but once they do they can only return to their human form by means of human blood. Which is part of the reason the town is in uproar. Runa actually hails from a line of wolfmen, though she hasn't shifted herself yet. And to add more mystery to it, things can also go wrong such as with Luca, Barberina's son who got stuck halfway into his wolf form. Just cool lore and I like this twist to the werewolf/wolf shapeshifter trope.
My main gripe with the book would have to be the romance between Rocco and Runa for me, though. Or lack thereof. I mean, the book is trying to push them to be an item, but I feel absolutely zero chemistry between these two. Rocco just kinda shows up a few times, instantly gets pretty damn intimate with Runa (with her consent, but still uncomfortably fast) and most of the book is just Runa pining for him because of how mysterious he is. That's it. She doesn't seem interested in him beyond how he is a mystery to her.
And of course it later turns out that he is one of the wolfmen, with him getting stuck in his wolf form from that point on. I mean...the connection between him and Runa just feels really forced and I feel no chemistry here whatsoever. Genuinely, Runa has so much more of a well-written connection to Vanessa that I could easily buy as romantic, but Vanessa instead is just a close friend. Which is fine, but, like, I feel that our main romance should be written just as well if not better as the main friendship if you want the reader to be able to buy it.
But overall this was a great book full of cool concepts. I loved Runa as a protagonist and I can't wait to read what she and her fellow wolfmen get up to in the second book, now that they've been chased out of the village's forests.
Rating: 4.5/5
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