Ahhh I really loved this. This is one of the two wolf books I was hyped for this summer, and it blew me away.

You can definitely tell this is a debut in some ways, but the largest part was the repetition in the narration. We often got the same string of thoughts multiple times, which led to some banter feeling repetitive. It was also common that Évike would take the reader through a specific train of thought, only to then start a conversation about those thoughts. It led to the reader sometimes reading the same thing twice, in short succession. While this overall didn't take away from the reading experience too much for me, it was still something I certainly noticed.

Besides that though, I was in love with the story, it's world, and the characters. The two main characters have the dynamic of Nina and Matthias in Six of Crows, and I loved that. It meant their journey was full of banter as they slowly started to warm to each other, while also forcing both characters to reckon with their own cultures and upbringing, and how that informs their opinions and feelings about each other. It meant there was a lot of room for personal growth outside the specific plot, and I just grew to love Évike and Gáspár more and more.

I also loved the folklore that backed most of this story, and the reverence with which these stories are told shows a love and care for them on the part of the author. This had to be my favorite part of the book, even beyond the dynamic between the two main characters, and I loved reading the story that seemed to accompany each new scene in the plot. It was so tightly woven together in that sense, where Évike seemed to carry a story for each new thing that she and Gáspár faced. It made this novel overall feel richer and deeper, a story within a world of even more stories.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book, and it was one of my favorite reads in April/May. I can't wait to see what Reid writes next!