This is the first novel by TJ Klune I've read and I found it both interesting and infuriating. The coming of age story of Oxnard (Ox) and Joe Bennett is interesting with the intersecting story lines of werewolves, humans and witches. It conjures images of loyalty, betrayal and belonging well. The fantasy world portrayed and the characters connections to their world was well written . However, I felt the author dwelled excessively long on the personal conflicts within the characters and their struggles to understand themselves and their social interactions. At times I found the storyline and characters fascinating and well portrayed, at others times I wanted the author to just move along, feeling that the novel just kept repeating itself. I also found the sex scenes to be excessive and unnecessary. I'm sure others will disagree but I found them distasteful and skipped reading them. Overall this book and series is not of interest to me.

Ox became friends with Joe who is a shapeshifter. He and Ox form a special bond but was torn apart by circumstances. They reunited later when they are both older... Incredibly moving...

I love the relationships in the book. This book is not as sweet as House on the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering door but the writer has a way with relationships.... Enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc.

Did I love this? FUCK YES.

This was candy canes and pinecones, epic and awesome. This was entirely new and refreshing and completely unexpected, which I should honestly just expect from TJ Klune from now on. His characters are just so RICH and layered and nuanced and....different. They burrow themselves into your heart so deeply you can't help but cherish them.

I loved meeting Ox, a character who I can say I have literally never come across before, but who manages to say so much with few words. His pain and self-doubt felt authentic and heartbreaking, but his strength and loyalty blew me away with happiness. He isn't perfect, he makes mistakes and can hurt those around him, and there are several times where he just needs to be alone with his own thoughts to get back to himself. All of this combined to make him a character I felt I could know and love in real life. As someone with a very complicated relationship with a parent, his abandonment feelings and self-doubt really hit home to me and I appreciate the care and respect Klune used to deftly show the lingering pain and effects of such a relationship.

And Joe....oh Joe. His evolution and growth throughout the book from a 10 year old boy haunted by trauma but shining for Ox, into a beleaguered adult with the weight of his family on him was everything it should have been - funny, hopeful, exciting, tiring, complicated, sorrowful, and loving. Nothing ever came easy for him and while I hated some of his choices, I think Klune delivered on giving us an authentic journey for him where there were no easy and clean choices.

The rest of the pack was great to meet and grow with, though I do think the expansion, especially in the second half of the book, took away from some of the focus on the plot. The middle of the book itself felt a bit stilted and stagnant, but I do feel that truly everything came full circle and was necessary.

Finally, the breadth and scope of the world built was done well. I had my doubts it could be built in a believable and consuming manner but Klune achieved it and then some. While we don't have all the answers about magic and everyone's powers, this is just the first book in a 4-book series with 3 novellas, so I think Klune provided just enough foundation to frame the series and leave more to be explored. PackPackPack.

One of my favorite books of the year!

In Wolfsong, we live in the head of a boy called Ox. It's visceral. The writing style changes as he does. The structure of his mind, his thoughts, and his beliefs play out on the page. He starts as a little child, snapshots of pivotal moments in his life. These are the moments, good and bad, that stick out as you grow older. The ones that are stamped on you, even as the years blur. Ox's father is a drunk who's ashamed of his family and his life. He tells Ox he's dumb and slow, and he grows frustrated when Ox doesn't understand that his father is leaving them.

Ox's narrative is rarely straight-forward. He takes time to process what people say and do, almost like he can't understand what's being done and said. He's been taught and treated like he doesn't understand much, and so he believes it. But believes it in a way that stops him from really contemplating, in the moment, whether he understands or not. There's something about Ox in those moments that make the reader sad and heartbroken for him because he doesn't see his own potential and intelligence. He's been taught not to even consider that he might have either of those attributes.

When Ox is sixteen and walking home from school, he stops at the mouth of his dead-end street. There's a boy standing there. He's bright and bold the way most little boys are, curious with a lack of boundaries. This boy is speaking so much and so fast, asking more than listening, that Ox gets flooded with so much. Even though Ox doesn't say much, this boy is enamored with him. He takes Ox by the hand to the only other house on Ox's street. It's been empty for years, but now it's teeming with the Bennett family. They don't question Joe when he leads Ox through the door.

Ox had always been a little alienated from others his own age, always a step outside of everything. People looked and treated him as though there was something different about him, something slow to understand. Kind and cruel people alike. But the Bennetts immediately crowd him, offering affection and acceptance to a boy who doesn't understand why they would even think to treat him as noteworthy.

The relationships between Ox and each of the Bennetts is so emotional and individual. Kelly and Carter are the two older Bennett boys - Ox's age. The seem to adopt him, encompass him, almost revere him in a way that makes it clear they know he's their equal, and they make it clear that everyone else should too. These three boys were likely my favorite secondary relationship in the book.

The way that Klune builds friendships and affection manages to be gradual even when it's sudden. This is because of the way Ox views everything, the way he thinks it through, accepts it but is still confused, still believes what his father said about Ox not being able to understand. So Ox thinks he doesn't understand why they want him, even as he becomes an integral part of their lives.

Ox grows up with the Bennetts, tethered to them by Joe. Joe who clings to Ox in such an earnest way. Needing him as a friend, claiming him against his brothers. And it's clear that the Bennetts all love Ox; they understand him, but he's still Joe's. Carter and Kelly have a fierce loyalty to their little brother, and that spills into the way they love and lookout for Ox.

There is just something about this book -- the tone, the gradualness, being in Ox's head, knowing what's going on, what will happen, but watching Ox start to realize what he already knows. He's so unassuming and genuine that every moment when Ox realizes something about them and about himself had me smiling, had me tearing up, had me laughing. There's just something about the way this book builds, softly. It's the same way the friendship and feelings grow between Ox and Joe. Joe who claimed Ox at ten years old. Joe who watches Ox live his life, watches Ox not understand, waits for Ox while everyone else seems to know.

And when Joe is forced to leave Ox behind? God, there's something in the anguish, in how bereft Ox feels, but how he grows into a man, into someone else's shoes (realizing they were his to fill), into his position in that family, separate from the boy who gave it to him.

This book is somehow slow-paced, but not slow. It kept me up all night as I flipped through the years of Ox's life. Even though I understood the plot from the synopsis, it's a shallow description of so much more. The heart of this book is in the relationships between Ox and people, not the action-based plot itself. The way he begins to accept and know himself, both within the Bennett family and without. After meeting them, he begins to look at his life outside of them and understand everything he's already had. The things he knew deep down about the people already in his life that hadn't really resonated with him until the Bennetts.

Joe walked Ox into his family, but Ox already had a family of his own, and Ox finally recognizes this. As Ox becomes more aware of himself, separate from how people always thought about and treated him, he's able to see how everyone orbits him and always has.

Having this book as a single point of view - Ox's - makes it feel all-encompassing. I don't think it would work otherwise, because it's the story of Ox's growth, his understanding of his relationship to the world. If we start to see what the others think about him from their POV, it detracts from slow-build of Ox's mind -- him learning that he has gone through life not questioning any of it - not even that he's not bright or capable. He always thought he didn't have the capacity to understand or to express himself. But he realizes that it's not that he doesn't have the words, but he has too many of them too fast.

He changes so slowly, but it's so sweet and endearing, and we're left with a man that is so, so much. A man that is capable, loyal, instinctively intelligent, a fierce leader, and still unassuming. There's never a moment where he's suddenly angry about others' perception of him and his resulting perception of himself. He simply grows, realizing that the people that matter have always seen him. He was taught that others merely tolerated him. It was affection and acceptance that he craved as a sixteen year old boy being led by the hand into a broader understanding of his life.

This book is not without its faults. Early on, the r-word is used as a slur and insult toward Ox to convey how people act toward him. Its use is (unfortunately) realistic because the characters saying it are caricatures of how those kinds of shitty people would really act, but it felt unnecessary. There are ways to characterize and create the same impact without that word.

Something else to consider when reading this book - although maybe not a 'fault' because its inclusion is necessary to the story - but there are allusions to rape and child abuse that occur continuously through this novel. It's all in the past, prior to the start of the book, but it's something that everyone in the family is grappling with. It's repercussions are a big part of the book. Personally, I really only have a problem with including these topics/events in books is when they're used a plot device, a quick and flip event that isn't necessary to the book. Wolfsong, in turn, is a story of survival, recovery, and support.

Ultimately, I love this book. I don't care that it's a rerelease and not a debut. It's all-encompassing, visceral, heart-wrenching, and beautiful. It's a difficult story to tell, but it was written so well.

Now I'm reading the synopsis for book two on Amazon and hoping it's not a flipped-POV of the same timeline/events. It says it's available on Kindle, but it might be an earlier version, and I'd rather wait for the rerelease to see if it's an updated story. I typically don't like series that change POV characters with each sequel, but I care so much about so many of these characters that I'd love the timeline to continue through their minds and experiences.

This is one book that I need to sit with for awhile. Just to feel it out. To feel how it made me feel. I almost don't want to read anything else in this world/series, because I don't want anything to ruin this.

3/5 stars

I enjoyed this book. It’s the first of TJ’s books that I’ve read, and while there were certainly aspects I had issues with, I overall really liked it.

I knew going in that there was an age gap and was fully prepared to rip this book apart if it was done problematically. However, I think it was okay - Ox, the older and morally responsible one, doesn’t see Joe like that until Joe is 17. Even then, he is anxious about it and insists on waiting until Joe is old enough to do anything. Sure, it’s a little weird that Joe “claimed” Ox when he was 11, but I think it’s perfectly normal for a young child to idolize and crush on older people - it’s on the adults to not do anything about it, which happened here.

I thought the villain was lacking a bit. Richard was built up to be a mastermind always a step ahead, but they defeat him fairly easily and I felt let down.

I adored the relationships between the characters in this book, especially Ox and his found family. I think it’s by far the best aspect of the novel, such as Elizabeth, Mark, and Gordo’s relationships with Ox.

Ox’s development was also good. I could see the lasting effect his deadbeat dad had on him and how he constantly doubted himself, though he grew into himself by the end.

It's epic and awesome but also hurts like hell.

I really like this book for the slow burn (literally takes more than a decade) and the incredibly beautiful the family bonds. And the loss, and grief.

But it hurt. There would be fleeting moments of incandescent happiness. And then it HURT. And then some more. And just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. There was never a real break from the hurting and the grieving, and in the brief moments when no one was grieving, an evil far more evil than I was expecting reared its ugly head and started torturing and killing. It was just far darker than I was expecting it to be.

It is a bit long in places in my opinion, and the pacing is a bit off for me sometimes, but all in all, it's TJ Klune, with his incredibly moving prose and the ability to completely gut you with a simple phrase, so. Read it? But bring tissues. You will need them.

I had read House on the Cerulean sea and was in love with TJ Klunes writing from the start so when I saw another book on NetGalley for review I jumped at the chance. I got halfway through Wolfsong knee this book would be the same. You really feel enveloped in the character and I love the relationship that Ox and the mix of fantasy and romance that this novel has!

I love TJ Klune. Like House on the Cerulean see and Under the Whispering Door are two of my favorite books. That being said - this is not it. This is a re=release of some of his earlier work (and I think an attempt on TORs part to get some extra money out of his current popularity?). This reads like fan fiction and doesn't live up to his current quality of work.

I don't mean to be rude but I think it is a DISGRACEFUL cash grab on Tor's part to republish an established author's juvenilia like this without any substantial edits. Klune is a better author than this now and has received plaudits for his new writing, but the writing in Wolfsong is terrible. Just the most inane dialogue it has ever been my displeasure to read, a constant handwaving of any important plot details, and characterization shallower than a puddle. Adjust your expectations now! This is not "The House in the Cerulean Sea, but with werewolves." This is "Twilight, but m/m." If that sounds good to you, go for it; otherwise, it is not worth bashing your head against horrible prose for over six hundred pages.

Thank you NetGalley for the advance copy for review.

Although this book is not new, it has been rereleased. I am a hug fan of TJ Klune's stand alone novels. I had been considering this one for some time and decided to give it a try.

I am sorry to say that I am not a fan of this one. I felt like the writing was just not to the level of his other works I have read. I struggled to get into the story and am sad to say that I just was not able to continue reading.

An interesting story full of twists, turns, fun characters and overall a book I would consider reading time and time again.