Book Review: She Wolf by Dan Smith

It has a wolf on the cover, which means I have to read it. Of course. Spoilers ahead.

Ylva is a young Dane whose mother is brutally murdered by a three-fingered man. Ylva manages to survive and is dead-set on only one thing: revenge. But then she meets a woman named Cathryn and a boy named Bron. Ylva will now have to find out if revenge is truly what she is seeking.

This was a lovely, immersive book to read. The author clearly did his research into the setting and time period, it just shows. I could pretty much instantly get lost in Ylva's world and was very soon hooked on the story.

One of the highlights of the book are the characters, particularly Ylva herself. She goes through a great arc in this book. I also admire how she feels like a real kid in a terrible situation. She is rude, she is dismissive, she is traumatized, she is incredibly stubborn, she puts both herself and others at risk, but she's also deep down just incredibly lost even if she thinks she knows what she wants. What a great, realistic character with a lovely arc.

Cathryn and Bron, our two main side characters, are also quite lovely. I especially loved Cathryn's "mama bear" attitude and how she was pretty much instantly willing to help Ylva despite how difficult the girl was being. Cathryn's death upset me for real. Bron also has a nice growing friendship with Ylva in the last third or so in the book. Heck, I even liked how the main antagonist in the story, the three-fingered man, turns out to not be as awful as we initially think he is. Don't get me wrong, he is still a terrible human being; he's a slaver after all. But we also learn there's a little more to him than him just being a murdering slave-hunter, he's not a one-dimensional villain. I also liked Geri, who isn't really a character but more so a figment of Ylva's thoughts and feelings personified. Even he had a solid presence in the story.

I also really admire how this book didn't spoon-feed everything to its audience at once. Things are very often not what they seem and are revealed rather late into the story, or things we thought we knew turn out to be false. The author did a lovely job of keeping me consistently hooked by revealing these secrets and twists like this. You never quite knew what would happen next and what our characters were all about.

If I do have to have a criticism it's that I'm not too fond of how they handled Freki the wolf pup. He's just kind of...there in the story. But he doesn't do that much outside of comforting Ylva and eventually being taken in by the wolf pack. He doesn't really have a huge role or presence in the story, neither does he have much agency or a personality. I wouldn't say Freki was handled downright poorly, but it was a bit disappointing for me (as a wolf lover) that he overall didn't amount to much in the story.

But with that said, this is still a great book and I absolutely recommend it. Do know that it is an absolutely brutal read with quite a few deaths and fight scenes, but if you can stomach it, it's well worth it.

Rating: 4/5