Book two! Spoilers ahead!
When Stacy realizes that her wolves have been discovered and might be in danger, she and her pack travel to the desert biome, where they again hope to rescue new friends while also hopefully staying unnoticed.
A fun second installment! I really had a good time with it. The plot was simple, but engaging enough. It also builds up the mystery pretty well (like what exactly are Stacy's wolves? They're said to be Arctic wolves, but they're also supernaturally intelligent and have magical powers), while also answering some of the mysteries set up by the first book (who is Stacy and where did she come from?).
Stacy being raised by the wolf pack after a (for her parents) fatal helicopter crash was something I didn't see coming, but I'm glad we got some of it resolved here. I do think that there's still more that can be answered regarding where she comes from (what was her previous name, if any; what does the charm bracelet mean; does she still have any living relatives?). Part of me also wonders why she forgot who she is and what happened, but then again trauma can make people repress things. However, I do find it odd that some things of her former life she does seem to remember (e.g. how to read and make contraptions and more human-oriented stuff like that), yet other things she's completely repressed. Feels a bit inconsistent.
I do think that there maybe should've been a tad more focus on Stacy's trauma of finding out she's an orphan, though. Yes, she's upset, but her frustration seems to more so be fueled by her feeling betrayed by the pack for hiding the truth for her, than the actual truth of her parents being dead really affecting her all that much. It's definitely present, but you'd think that with a young girl finding out something this devastating and reliving a trauma she's suppressed for years should be a bit more emotionally affecting her.
That said, I do like how in this book the individual personalities and traits of each individual pack member comes out a bit more. They're still not super unique or anything, but at least now I can tell most of the wolves apart, something I struggled a bit with in book one due to how similar personality-wise the wolves felt.
We do get another dog added to our main team and honestly by now I do think that our main cast is becoming a bit bloated. We already have the full wolf pack, Stacy herself, Paige, and two wolf pups were added to the cast last book. Plus a bat as honorary member, I guess. Now there's yet another dog being added. I get that in real life this is the author's real dog and she probably wanted to have her pet make a cameo, but I don't think that having such a huge cast works in this series, at least not so far. Just now that I'm finally starting to tell apart our Arctic wolf pack, we're already adding more characters to the main cast? It's a bit much, is all.
Still, this was overall a fun and adventurous read!
Rating: 4/5
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