Recommendation: Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Sometimes there are books that sit with you—in you. They press against you, make their way into your soul, and rest there. Wolfsong was one of those books for me.

I wasn’t expecting too much. The back of the book promised murder, a haunted past, werewolves, and a queer romance. The cover was beautiful and I love fantasy novels, so I picked up this 500+ page book and began reading. What I found in those pages blew me away.

First, we have the protagonist Oxnard Matheson, a young boy who, for all intents and purposes, seemed to be ordinary—nothing, nobody, just Ox. The narration was short and clipped in places, but as a reader, I knew there was more to him. His inner world—the things he remembered, the life he experienced—was anything but dull. Yet, until his sixteenth birthday, Ox believed he was nothing.

And then he meets a little boy, Joe Bennett, who drags Ox to the Bennett’s home and introduces him to his entire family—father Thomas, mother Elizabeth, uncle Mark, and brothers Carter and Kelly. From that moment on, Ox becomes part of something bigger than himself—a pack.

I won’t say much more because I don’t want to give anything away. Truthfully, I usually see plot points coming early, but this book had me guessing often. If you are looking for a novel that hits hard, keeps you guessing, makes you think about the true meaning of family, and bites your hand to drag you along the road of a kid’s journey from ordinary to something much, much more, from child to man, then I highly recommend this book.