Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1)

by T.J. Klune

[lessthelonely]

3/5 stars.

I feel like it’s sort of tradition for me to just start each and every Book Review with a statement of how it’s been hard to read, but I would like to say that no book was read in such a fragmented way as this one. I’m in the last year of my Bachelor’s Degree and now in the last semester so you best believe I have a lot of projects and stuff to do. In fact, I should probably already started studying for a test that’s coming up.

Either way, Wolfsong. This is the second book I’ve read by T. J. Klune and I must say that it took me a while to read, even if I started with a huge headstart on it, as I started to read this book before the semester’s whole shenanigans kicked in and stole all my free time. I read this book mostly on weekends (on train rides home, specifically) but I brought it one too many times to my apartment during the week and I finished the final 50 pages that way.

This is only the second or third time I actually took notes as I was reading, usually after each reading session, and I made sure to take a lot of notes. I really liked The House in The Cerulean Sea, actually, it’s recently been slated for a May release in Portugal, if that interests you, but this book is from a different time and a different point in the author's writing journey.

What is Wolfsong about? Well, I’ve been saying it’s an omegaverse book and I don’t think that’s a bad assumption, because Alphas, Betas and Omegas are all here; however, this is in a weird spot in terms of marketing and I can see why this book was released as a self-published title: it’s definitely coming of age-y, but it’s also got explicit sexual content.

But back to the writing itself: by page 100, I noted that this book had a little bit of a problem. It used the same tactic way too much. You know when books basically summarize what’s about to happen in this one, usually electrifying, sentence? Yeah, this book does it a lot, both as a cliffhanger and a chapter opener. Phrases started by I should’ve known or even This is why.

This book has moments of quick, sharp and very funny dialogue, but it also has moments that seem to drag on and on. Sometimes there’s a lot of description, maybe a bit much, but sometimes there’s none. I mean, in average it’d be the right amount, but you get my gripe with this, right?

The werewolves in this book are said to experience emotions differently when they’re in wolf form and I guess that means they feel colors. That was the description for emotions most of the time: blue was sad, green was used for relief, red was anger (I’m not sure of this one, but I’m pretty sure that’s it).

It made a lot of moments incredibly distracting because all I could think about was how these characters were saying colors and you just had to shoe in the way they were feeling. On the other hand, I feel like the way the communication between wolves was simplified was very well done.

Describing emotion with colors is definitely something you can do... it’s just... A choice. Ya know?

By the time the main romance started, I was bored with the plot, not going to lie. And then, the romance was also incredibly underwhelming; not because it was angsty, which it was, but because the angst didn’t resonate with me at all. At least, the protagonist keeps mentioning how it could’ve been avoided and is allowed to keep bitching about that - because he’s fucking right.

I liked Ox, though I feel like his way of talking went from noticeably forced to prove a point to the reader, to him talking more inline with every character and then his initial, characteristic, way of speaking just appeared when the scene demanded him to shut up. That’s how it felt, because this boy-turned-man knew how to pack a fucking punch in his words and I definitely had moments where I was like: DAMN, THAT WAS MEAN.

DO IT AGAIN.

I feel like this book wasn’t outlined at all, which is fine, but it shows. There’s this big moment in the book where, as a last ditch resort, something is brought up as a possibility, but then it doesn’t happen, which just leads you to think about how intriguing it would’ve been if it had happened. Only for 100 more pages to pass and it happening, though in a different way, of course. It felt retconned, I guess.

But my biggest gripes with this book are how repetitive it is and the antagonist. The same situations keep happening, usually only the final outcome changes and even that isn’t that significant since only 2 of those times feel significant. In between this, this book reads like a slice of life, not going to lie.

This isn’t to say the writing is poor. Because I wouldn't say that. But the plot could’ve used some major editing and tightening, but since I’m talking about writing again, there were some passages that just kept being repeated, word for word, again and again, and I’m sorry, but it was simply annoying at some point. Because most of the times, no new meaning was added to them.

As for the antagonist, here’s my thoughts, directly from the notes I took as I was reading:

Richard doesn’t sound like that big of a villain and I don’t really like him or find him captivating. I feel like it’s very hard to write a proper antagonist, right now. In fact, not an antagonist, because an antagonist is easier, but a villain. A straight-up villain. Someone who from the first mention of their name you know they’re a bad guy. Modern television and animation movies have sort of really affected how villains are perceived because most of the time, now? We get surprise villains. Hell, my first book had a surprise villain in the first draft - that’s going to change -, but that’s a very easy way to get a good gasp out of the audience, provided it makes sense and it isn’t pulled out of your ass. But Richard is just said to be bad and OK, he [SPOILER], but who does that affect outside of [SPOILER]?

So yeah, all in all, I’m saying this is a coinflip. You might like it, yo