I have decided to DNF this book at 35%.

I was interested in this title because I have enjoyed a couple of other books by this author. I did not realize this book was about Werewolves and that type of fantasy doesn’t hold my interest.

I also found a lot of the dialogue between two of the main characters frustrating and immature.

I wasn’t interested in continuing with this story or these characters.

This is the tale of the Bennett pack of werewolf shifters, the oldest, most respected pack in the entire country, and how a human boy named Ox first heals the broken family at the end of the lane and then makes them stronger than they'd ever been before.

At the core of the story, though, are Ox Matheson and Joe Bennett. How they meet, how they grow up, together and separately, how they become family and eventually more. Mates.

At 12, Ox's drunken father leaves for good, telling his son that he's "dumb as an ox" and that "people will give you shit all your life." Ox never feels like he fits in and that he isn't worth much at all.

Then 4 years later, Ox meets a little blond tornado named Joe on the side of the road, who is convinced that Ox is his personal "everything."

At 10 years old, Joe had been kidnapped and broken by a monster. He'd withdrawn from the world and hadn't spoken a single word for over a year. Until he meets a 16 y.o. boy who immediately becomes his entire world.

The next 7 years are mostly " candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome ," with lots of humor and touching moments of family and belonging -- until Joe's monster returns and TJ gives us a huge dose of wookie cry face. Bastard.

Wolfsong by TJ Klune is a soul-stirring adventure centered around Ox Matheson, a young man who discovers a world of werewolves and witches when he meets the extraordinary Bennett family. As Ox forms an unexpected connection with Joe, the youngest Bennett boy, tragedy strikes, tearing the pack apart. Years later, when Joe returns as a troubled man, Ox can no longer ignore the undeniable bond between them. The book expertly explores themes of love, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of family while seamlessly incorporating LGBTQ+ representation.

TJ Klune's Wolfsong is a remarkable adult fantasy romance that weaves together elements of werewolves, witches, and adventure with a slow-burn romance and relatable main characters. Klune's unique writing style, though occasionally choppy, effectively conveys the profound emotions and immerses readers in Ox's world. The book explores universal themes of identity, acceptance, and self-worth while capturing the essence of small-town life and creating a sense of community and belonging. Despite minor flaws in pacing and the handling of the age gap between characters, Wolfsong is an enchanting and powerful novel that will resonate with fans of supernatural romance and LGBTQ+ representation.

I am pretty sure I love everything TJ Klune writes. This one grabbed my heart and wrenched it. It hit a little close to home for a variety of reasons. This book is a fantastic adventure that will be sure to pull at the heart strings.

“It’s always the ones who are the quietest who often have the greatest things to say.”

This book spoke to my soul. I want to wrap Ox in a hug and protect him. The world needs more pure people like Ox. I loved following his journey, growth and adventure. TJ Klune knocked this one out of the park.

Ox is different. He’s always known he was - his daddy told him repeatedly, before he left Ox and his mother. Ox was different, and when Joe and the Bennetts move into the house at the end of the lane, they begin to show him how different is wonderful.

What follows is an adventure of found family, love, belonging and adventure - with a few werewolves and witches thrown in because why not.

Check this one out if you’re looking for:
🐺 Werewolves, witches and adventure
🐺 Open door romance (slowwww burn)
🐺 Awkward main characters
🐺 Best friends to lovers
🐺 Being loved for who you are

Wolfsong is a rerelease by Tor books. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor books for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

3.5 ⭐️
I never know what to expect when reading TJ Klune books cause it's always a different vibe everytime hahaha. The found family aspect in this book and the fantasy aspect worked so well together in this book! There were some cringe aspect and lots of dialogue based writing in this book but it wasn't hard to follow!

One thing that was weird for me is that Joe was 10 and Ox was 16 when they met? And then in the story Joe and Ox are partners? This aspect was kinda weird for me and not a fan of this age gap 🥲.

The writing style in this is unique for sure cause it's a bit choppy if that makes sense! But the writing was a bit long and some aspect of the book was repetitive 🥲

This book has queer romance, werewolves romance, found family!


Thank you Netgalley, TOR Forge for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

No one does a found family or warm fantasy read like TJ Klune! Wolfsong was a stunning read. When a mysterious family moved into Green Creek, Ox Matheson’s world becomes filled with magic, but when tragedy hits, he had to do everything he can to keep this pack alive. There’s werewolves, magic, love, found family, steam, literally everything. It’s a 500 page book that reads as fast a novella—the pacing, the language, the characters, it’s all captivating and addicting. I loved Ox. He’s brave and quiet and willing to sacrifice everything for those he loves. The family in this is beautiful, I loved the pack and their acceptance of Ox too. It’s special and supportive. The writing too—Ox starts this book as 12 years old and follows him fully into adulthood and his journey and growth felt so organic. Plus he and Joe are just a wonderful love story too, their connection so striking. The action and the love were all so well balanced and TJ Klune is just a genius. I’m really excited for more of this Green Creek series.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Publication date: July 4, 2023

This was my second TJ Klune book and first in the Green Creek Series. After requesting this arc I realized this had already been published and this version was a refresh and release.

After reading The House on the Cerulean Sea, I wasn’t sure what to expect. TJ Klune has such a unique writing style. Simple but such strong messaging throughout.

WolfSong is a fantasy romance with LGBTQ2+ representation really well done! I really enjoyed this first book in the series and will be adding the rest to my tbr. I’m not quite done with the quirky, unique characters of Green Creek.

Oxnard (Ox) Matheson had always been told he wasn’t quite enough. Not always the quickest to understand or learn and often the subject of ridicule with his peers. When Ox’s father left him and his mother when he was 12, he made sure Ox knew to not expect much from this life.

When Ox was sixteen, the Bennett family moved in beside them. Introducing him to the energetic 10 year old Joe and lifelong friends Kelly and Carter. Ox had never belonged before and with the Bennett’s he didn’t just belong, he was something a somebody.

The Bennett’s introduced Ox to a world of magic, witches and werewolves but with that comes evil. Evil came to them when Ox was 23 and Joe was 17. The evil stripped Ox and the Bennett’s of their leader and some of them sought revenge. Splitting the pack in what would be the toughest years ahead nearly broke them all.

Back together and trying to mend all that is broken between them, Ox and Joe fight to merge the broken packs and find a way back together. The evil isn’t dead though and is coming back for them. Can Ox and Joe come together and defeat the evil and keep their family safe? Or will the evil win and break them apart forever.

I loved this book! I enjoy fantasy and magic and this was done in such a way that it was easy to follow and left me routing for them all to find their way back to each other. This was a story of love and loss, family relationships and the knowledge that not all family members are blood. This was a 4 plus star read for me!!

#NetGalley #wolfsong #tjklune

“…the world is a wide and scary place. And every now and then, you just have to be reminded of the way home.”

I picked up WOLFSONG on a whim, knowing vaguely it was about gay werewolves and found family and had a bit of a cult following. Unfortunately I can’t count myself among that group - this book is not for me. I was intrigued initially; I enjoyed Ox finding connections at the shop and with the Bennetts, the beginning of their powerful relationships to each other, and the slow reveal of the werewolf family and other fantasy elements of the story. But (spoiler) the transition from Joe being a literal child to Ox’s lover really didn’t work for me. I probably should have stopped reading then, but I had liked enough of the story that I dragged myself through the end, getting increasingly annoyed with jagged and weirdly repetitive writing style. There’s a lot of emotion here, devastating loss and intense anger, all-consuming love and fierce loyalty, but because I wasn’t really invested it didn’t keep me engaged. This definitely feels like a particular kind of fanfic, juvenile with randomly graphic smut, and perhaps I’d have liked it better if I went in with that expectation. Not for me but cheers to y’all who love this, there’s three more books in this series. Thanks to Tor Books for the review copy; this re-released edition is out 7/4.

Content warnings: death of a parent, grief, violence, gore, child abuse, kidnapping/torture of a child, threats of sexual violence, domestic violence, murder

Ox is 12 when his dad leaves. A few years later, a new family, the Bennetts, move in next door. They hold a secret - they can turn into wolves.

I was missing the writing I enjoy from Klune here. Maybe the future ones in this series have that more!

4.5 stars

I read a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy romance, but not much paranormal. So believe it or not this is my very first werewolf romance. And it may be my last…because it has ruined me for future books.

The writing style on this one is quite different, in that it’s almost like stream of consciousness. It’s told in first person from the pov of Ox, who is described as a bit slow and simple (I’m not a fan of this term, but I’ll use it). This results in a simplified writing style. It’s mostly short sentence after short sentence, line by line, as opposed to paragraphs. Sorry, I don’t think that made a lot of sense, but you’ll get it when you read the book. This writing style is the only reason the book did not get a full 5 stars as I think it’s a bit jumpy to read and doesn’t flow well, but I definitely really enjoyed my time. I laughed, I cried, I swooned.

Thank you to NetGalley & Tor Publishing Group for this advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.

4.5/5

Thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for the ARC.

I am so here for werewolf romantasy and now I will devour this whole series in short order for sure. Loved this book and in true TJ fashion you will laugh, cry, and curse him, sometimes all in the same paragraph, but you will definitely fall in love with the Bennett pack.

Green Creek is a small town in Oregon, where Ox has grown up in a dysfunctional family and when his father walks out, he is left adrift. The house that sits at the end of the road has been empty, but one day the Bennett's return and Ox meets their young son Joe who forms an immediate attachment to Ox. Little does Ox understand how his world is about to change. The story has everything you want in a good shifter drama: found family, terrific villains, tragedy, joy and of course, fated love. This is an adult book so check content warnings, but I definitely recommend this if you love shifter stories with excellent LGBTQ rep, so go pick this series up!!

I've been making my way through Klune's work for several years now, but have somehow never broken into the Green Creek series. However, with Tor publishing the whole series again, and with them giving me an ARC (thanks!), I decided the time was ripe. And boy, am I glad I did.

I read the whole book over the course of two evenings, an absolute "stay-up-late-screw-my-sleep-schedule" book. Werewolves have always been one of my favorite paranormal creatures, and I was engrossed in the story of Ox and the Bennett family. This book has a lot of heart, and a lot of love for found families. It spans the length of I think about ten years, so you get to see the main couple, Joe and Ox, grow together, and apart, and back together.

The book is written in a choppy, simplistic writing style, which works for being in the head of the main character, Ox, but I'm not sure how it'll work if that style continues into the other POVs. There's also a ton of italics for emphasis which is one of my writing pet peeves, but I was having such a good time I was able to mostly ignore them.

Very much looking forward to cracking into the rest of the series!

I was hooked on Wolfsong from the first chapter. Wolfsong is a fantasy novel, the first in the Green Creek Series, with elements of the love and bonds developed with found family. Klune has a gift for writing characters that pull on your heartstrings. The story involves a lot of internal thoughts and descriptions of feelings versus focusing on dialogue. I sometimes found some of those thoughts to get kind of repetitive, but that is probably realistic when it comes to negative thoughts that we tell ourselves over the years. I fell in love with the humans, witches and werewolves in the story and can't wait to get back into their world for Ravensong (Green Creek #2).

Having seen rave reviews of T.J. Klune’s “The House of the Cerulean Sea” and “Under the Whispering Door”, I grabbed this opportunity to get my hands on “Wolfsong”.

Originally published in 2016, Pan MacMillan recently released this edition of “Wolfsong”, the first of the Green Creek saga again.

Set in the lush green forests of Oregon, it was very easy to get pulled into this wonderful world of mystery and magic. This wonderful world of Wolfsong.

“It was warm like a summer day. It was candy canes and pinecones, it was epic and awesome, it was dirt and leaves and rain, it was grass and lake water and sunshine.
And

“Somewhere, a bird sang a song that ached.”
Just beautiful, don’t you think? “Wolfsong” is a deeply intense and emotional journey. Sometimes I felt as if I can’t breathe, because the passion ran so deep, and the author just knows how to convey that specific mood and enchantment.

Oxnard Matheson was a quiet teenager devoted to his single mother and his job at the local garage. One day, he meets a new neighbor, a kid by the name of Joe, and his whole life changes.

This book is hilarious and beautiful and emotional. It is also very slow burn, but it's totally worth the wait. All of the characters are so well developed and unique. Oxnard and Joe have an especially unique relationship and it was sometimes frustrating to only get Ox's point of view because he definitely never saw the whole picture right away. The time jumps were fun because it felt like you were watching through a window briefly and then moving on.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this book if you enjoy MM friends to lovers, found family, age gap, gentle giants, werewolves, witches, and revenge plots.

I was provided with a digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'll be honest, if I had known this was a werewolf romance, I wouldn't have requested it. But I just saw that there was a T.J. Klune novel available, and since I've really loved his other books, I requested this one too. And don't get me wrong, there are a number of things that I liked about this. It's a great novel about found family, about hurt and healing, about love and learning. Those are all hallmarks of Klune's stories, and they're in abundance here.

But like I said, it's a werewolf romance, and the comparisons to Twilight (which the author even includes as character jokes) can't be denied. I thought the imprinting/romance between Joe and Ox was problematic, even though that seems par for the course with werewolf pack behavior -- or at least how it's been envisioned in fiction. I also found the possessiveness problematic, but again, I think the expectation is that the reader should accept that as typical pack behavior. But knowing those things didn't stop the ick factor for me.

I like some of the stylistic choices Klune made in telling this story, but I also think that some of them were overdone, and that the story as a whole could have been shorter. It's a 500+ page book with a 300-page story. I definitely skimmed in places because so much of it was repetitive.

After reading T.J. .Klunes books under the Whispering Door, The House in the Cerulean Sea, and In the Lives of Puppets, I was so excited to read some of Klunes works which predated these popular releases. I was so excited to be introduced to Ox, Gordo, and Joe and the Bennett clan. The welcome feeling felt warm and personal. I felt as though the Bennett family were the type of people who loved without question as long as their pack was safe; if you were loyal, they were loyal.
I wish someone looked at me the way Joe looks at Ox, smelling of “candy canes and pine cones and epic and awesome”. I will say I did not expect it to be as much of a romance read as it was, but I am not at all mad about it. I did think it would be more about pack, and family, loyalty, and survival and in many ways it is that as well. I feel like in the wolf pack, it does not matter if you are gay or bisexual and I really like that. There’s so much acceptance and openness about simply loving who you love. There are more negative connotations towards being human rather than a man loving another man and honestly, I can get behind that sentiment sometimes.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book if you are looking for a supernatural/ paranormal LGBTQIA+ romance with loyalty, heart, warmth, and a welcomeness towards all who offer good intentions. My one critique would be that some of the dialogue can be a bit campy but I really kind of think we all say dumb things when we are in love, don’t we?

Thank you to Netgalley, TJ Klune, and Tor Books for providing me with an arc in return for an honest review. Before I get into the review I just wanna take a moment and say congrats to TJ Klune for how far he has come. He really broke out big with the release The House in the Cerulean Sea. So it's nice to see his earlier work starting to get the same attention.

Wolfsong is about a boy named Ox who was abused by his father and the world. Next door lived a pack of wolf shifters who Ox became fascinated by. Ox befriends the youngest Bennet boy named Joe but the two were torn apart when a murderer came to town and destroyed their lives. Joe left town but three years later returns a changed man, one who Ox can't deny his attraction to.

Gay werewolves for the win. The romance between Ox and Joe is amazing. The two have incredible chemistry. If you are looking for instant love mates this isn't it. The relationship builds over time with Ox and Joe growing together and learning to become their best selves.

The secondary characters really add to the beauty and complexity of this story. I can honestly say I enjoyed this book immensely.

If you're looking for an exciting, lovely, amazing read then this is the book for you and I recommend it for everyone.

TJ Klune has a way with words where you are pulled so deeply into the story that you don't even realize until you've reached the end.