Book Review: Wolvers by Taylor Brown

 

Book about wolves. I check it out. You know the drill. Spoilers ahead. 

Trace is a young man who just lost everything and sees an opportunity in becoming a wolf hunter ("wolver") for a shady organization. After an unlikely encounter with a nature-loving survivalist, Trace starts to try and redeem himself. But this also leads to him being replaced as wolver with the merciless assassin Murdoch. Together with the survivalist, Horn, and Trace's crush Imogen, the trio must now protect the wolves and wider nature against Murdoch and the shady organization he works for.

Okay, so, objectively speaking, yes, this is a good book. It's well-structured, the prose is eloquent, the characters have enough depth, the storyline is engaging and the climax intense.

But that does not mean that I enjoyed this book. Okay, I will say that I didn't hate it. But I just felt that the reading experience was kind of unpleasant. And the reason for it is simple: Our two main POVs of Trace and Murdoch. I just...really hate these characters, I'm sorry. The fact that they're both hunters who don't bat an eye at animal cruelty and murder (and, in Murdoch's case, worse) sickens me.

And don't come at me with the whole "Oh, Trace had a change of heart", I don't give a flip, I don't think that this is a character I can forgive for his actions. There's a few things I draw the line at, and animal cruelty is one of them. He can cry about it how bad he feels all he wants, that doesn't make me think that this character is worthy of redemption. 

Murdoch's POV is necessary for extra context and he's clearly supposed to be the villain, so while unpleasant to read I can still at least excuse his POV. But Trace's POV insisting that we think better of this asshole of a character isn't working for me. He's just such an unlikable character to follow, he felt genuinely unpleasant.

There are some good characters, like Horn and the wolves (of course), but since we're stuck in the POVs of two assholes for 90% of the book they don't come across as strongly as I'd have liked.

So yeah, objectively speaking this book is solid. Did I enjoy reading it? Not really, POVs kinda ruined it for me.

Rating: 3.5/5