Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

Do you ever read a book and when it’s over, you just sit back and scratch your head and say to yourself, “What was that even about?” That was this book for me.

I knew this was a contemporary novel from the very beginning—but I figured Chandler would give me a reason to care about the wolves involved in the story since most of the book is about them and the culture surrounding them. I was seriously disappointed—I never understood why I should be concerned about the wolves, beyond the basic “this could be bad for ranchers” notion. This novel assumed I was a small-town rancher who knew the ins and outs of how a town like this works and why—it assumed I knew things about nature and wolves and farming and cattle that I literally wouldn’t know unless I lived this lifestyle or was particularly interested in this subject for some reason. It explained nothing. It didn’t care if I was lost. Nothing any of the characters said or did lessened my confusion or showed me why everyone was freaking out about something that, to me, seems so simplistic—wolves.

On top of that, the writing was poor, the characterization was off-putting, and the instalove between KJ and her love interest, Virgil, made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Nothing about this book clicked except that it had potential to be new and different from most modern young adult books—but it failed in execution.

What I Liked: Spoilers!

• I need to start keeping more post-it notes about what I like when I read books—I usually only end up with a bunch of notes marking things I didn’t like or confused me, and nothing to remind me of what I found enjoyable. I’ll admit that sometimes reading about the wolves interested me—I wanted to know more about why they were so important, or how their packs functioned, or what drew people like KJ and Virgil’s mom, Eloise, to them. I wish the book had given me the chance to fall in love with them the way I wish I had been able to. It’s really a shame I couldn’t learn more about the subject matter by reading this, because once I started, I genuinely wanted to care.

What I Didn’t Like:

• This is a political book. Make no mistake, it has a “moral” and it wants you to agree with it at the end. Everyone was separated into basically two categories—good guys and bad guys. The “good” guys were all the people who wanted to the wolves to be reintroduced at Yellowstone and cared about nature. The “bad guys” were all the people who didn’t want the wolves back because of the various problems they caused—these characters were subsequently rude, aggressive, violent, and jerks in general. (The types of people who would shoot at a teenage boy during a parade or set a store on fire with the owner inside, over an opinion about wolves.) There was no gray area. There was no chance to humanize the opposing side. KJ and her team were right and there was no other way to see it. Literature should, and needs to, recognize the gray areas—it needs to understand that there is no black and white wrong/right way to life, even in the most horrible of characters. It certainly can’t show me one side of an issue, without even bothering to explain the issue to me, and ask me to believe that small-town ranchers will do awful things to people because they wrote an article about a wolf in the school newspaper. I didn’t appreciate the style this book took, and it left a bad taste in my mouth all during my experience with it.

• I wanted to care about the wolves. I wanted to care about KJ and her family/friends. I wanted to understand what was going on. But I didn’t—I couldn’t force myself to have feelings about anything that happened because the author (through KJ or other characters) failed to give me a reason to. This entire book is about wolves—and sometimes KJ’s all-consuming love for Virgil, but mostly wolves. KJ and every other character talked about wolves, fought about wolves, debated about wolves, etc, until the bitter end, but never once did any of them give me a reason for it. I come from what I thought was a small town, but it’s still a city. It’s urban. I don’t know any ranchers. There are no wolves near me. Ergo, by fate alone, I know absolutely nothing about these subjects because I never had a reason to be interested in them. However, according to Chandler’s characters, it’s ridiculous to assume that you might not know the ins and outs of being a cattle rancher or a girl who lives with cattle ranchers! If there’s something I dislike more than being told what to think in a story, it’s having that book assume I’m a certain kind of person. This novel was written for one group of people, and one group alone—the exact type of characters in it. Heaven forbid you want to learn anything from it—if you don’t understand it beforehand, this narration will leave you in the dust. Why did the townspeople freak out to the point where they lit KJ’s dad’s store on fire with him inside it? Why did they think it was okay to shoot at a teenage boy because he had a wolf sculpture in a parade? What is the mindset of any of the people arguing about wolves? It seems so silly to me—I know it should be a big deal, but to me, they’re just wolves. And this book lost the opportunity to educate me about a subject it believes it important by refusing to slow down for three seconds to tell me why I should care

• Virgil and KJ made no sense to me. More than half the time, the two were arguing with each other and ignoring the others’ very existence—every other time, they were in L-O-V-E and ready to die for each other. The climax ends with KJ hallucinating that Virgil is cheering her on so she doesn’t freeze to death. They hate each other or love each other. Virgil was so cardboard that I wasn’t even sure why KJ liked him so much in the first place. Instalove needs to work really hard for me to believe it—that didn’t happen here.

• The writing wasn’t very good. The usual present tense complaints I have are all here, but sometimes it just didn’t feel natural. There’s a part where KJ narrates, “When I’m alone with him everything inside me purrs like a giant cat. I have to actually control the impulse to rub my back against his leg.” Okay… Or the major info dumps that happen eleven pages into the book. Or the overwhelming amount of times the words “say” or “says” were used.

Overall: I really wish I could have liked this book more—but it made too many assumptions for me to care enough to put up with it. I wanted to quit more than once, and I just didn’t hate it enough to give it one star. I really wanted to care. But the characters, plot progression, instalove, and writing all worked together to ensure that I didn’t and never would. Unless you’re very familiar with cattle ranches and small towns and wolves, this isn’t the book for you. If you’re pretty much a real life KJ, then go ahead and give it a shot—it might appeal to you because you’d actually understand what’s going on. Otherwise, leave it on the shelf. It’s not really worth the time.

(http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/105948023927/wolves-boys-and-other-things-that-might-kill-me)