“All I wanted to do was come home, because without you, I don’t have a home.”

Wolfsong is the fourth book by TJ Klune I’ve read (the others being Under the Whispering Door, The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Somewhere Beyond the Sea), and it’s the first that I’m not one hundred-percent sure what I think of it. It is also not exactly the book that was described on the back of the book; not really a bad thing, I just don’t quite understand why publishing companies have been doing this lately. The writing is a little staccato (though I suppose that is supposed to be because it is written from the point of view of a simple, no-nonsense person, with simple, no-nonsense thoughts) and it started to veer slightly into overdramatically angsty romance novel territory. And the resolution of the big finale confrontation? I thought we had moved on from that kind of  jump scare back in the days of Fatal Attraction.

Joe, when he’s first introduced, has to be a very small ten year-old to climb up a sixteen year-old’s legs by shimmying; or I just overestimate the size of an average ten year-old, seeing as Ox knows Joe is one upon first sight.  And yes, I know in real life problems don’t get solved immediately, and people work through problems while in the relationship; it just felt like Ox and Joe wound up back together because Joe had wanted it ten years earlier, Ox wanted the pack together, and it’s what the author wanted to happen. And for Joe, Carter, and Kelly’s mother, and their uncle, boy did Elizabeth and Mark side with Ox rather quickly. So did Chris, Tucker, and Rico over Gordo, who they have been working with for over twenty years. And I am so glad we had Frankie, “the Vanishing Plot Boyfriend”. He apparently existed in the plot to make Ox jealous, and then make Ox and Joe’s first date awkward, and then..he moves out of town to college? He gets hit by a random car? He swans off to the warehouse where all characters that are only brought out to drive the plot along are stored? It’s a mystery. I was also loving that everyone who goes on “Mission: Revenge” shaves their heads and grows beards, so we know how feral and consumed by revenge they all are, like a four-person gang of angry, supernatural Valjeans swaggering throughout the United States.

  (So angry, so revenge-driven, so feral, so wolfy, so…hot?)

Also appreciated is the fact that everyone pretty much just rolls with the fact that magic and werewolves exist; other than some snarky references to Twilight, people in the know seem to just take it in stride. Unfortunately it’s not commonly known; if it was, maybe Arthur and Elizabeth (quick aside; is it obligatory to give a female character with the last name of Bennett the first name of Elizabeth? Because this is the third character I’ve encountered with that name.) would have taken Joe to see the therapist he desperately needed after being kidnapped, tortured, and then not speaking for eighteen months. Though after the events of the book, I think everyone could do with a couple of really good, long, thorough sessions.

I’ll probably pick up the other books in the series to see where it’s all going, but I’m a bit surprised that I’m not in that much of a rush to buy them. In my opinion, TJ Klune has written better. Still made me cry in parts though, and for some strange unexplainable reason the chapter where Ox first meets Joe and the Bennetts I kept going back to.

I will warn, there is copious profanity, a boatload of violence (though in a book about werewolves, are you surprised?), and graphic sex scenes, so if none of that is your cup of tea, walk away.