TJ Klune is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. This is a book about growth, love, and lore. Stunning wring and characters!

Normally, I wouldn’t consider myself someone who enjoys reading stories about werewolves, but of course, T. J. Klune made me fall in love with it. The book has such an enchanting way of telling the story that I simply couldn't help but enjoy every second of it. The ways T. J. Klune writes is so incredibly vivid and charming that "Wolfsong" will surely become one of those books that I will recommend to many urban fantasy readers.

I just finished WolfSong By TJ Klune @tjklunebooks and here is my review.

Oxnard Matheson was told he wouldn’t be anyone and he was sure that when his father said it, it must have been true, especially as his father left him and his mother.

Then they came…. The Bennett family. They saw what Ox was right from the beginning… Someone special… Someone who fits in with their pack.

The youngest Bennett boy, Joe instantly feels kinship with Ox and Ox is drawn to the magic and the family ties that this unusual shape shifting family has in spades.

Something awful happens and the pack leaves, leaving a gaping hole in Ox’s heart. 3 years later they return and Joe is now a man…. Ox is left reeling when he realizes what Joe means to him…. The call of the wolfsong is tumultuous..

The book was super long and I was grateful for a book like this being as full as this one. Firstly, I am not much for werewolf books. I’m more witch/vampire vibes… This book shook my foundation and hit some of the highest notes in any read I have read this year! I loved it. I loved the family dynamic. I loved the way magic was incorporated into the storyline. It was gritty and raw with how it dug deep into the psyche of humanity and pack mentality.

This book follows Ox and his perspective. It was a little weird having a 10 year old wolf being in love with a 16 year old teen and it was a bit unsettling for me but TJ Klune did an excellent job of keeping it realistic and not creepy at all.

I did think that honestly, the book could have been split into 2 books and just a little more could have been added into areas but I see why it was done this way and it worked. The style of writing is exceptional and the storytelling is done with such grace you can’t help become immersed in it.

4 stars, I already started Ravensong so review for that one coming next!!

Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for my gifted copy. These books are being rereleased with new covers!!

A big thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Not my favorite, but I'll gladly pick up another TJ Klune.

WolfSong by TJ Klune is an adult fantasy novel about gay werewolves. Literally that's all it is. Basically Ox's father left him when he was twelve, and thus sparked a long road of tragedy. Including finding love in a boy with a horrible secret. Who he later lost due to a monster attack. But now, three years later, to boy (technically man) is back. And Ox has to confront all the feelings he had for him.

I didn't not like this book it was good. I just don't think I was the target audience for it. So yeah, two stars.

Thank you for the ARC! An interesting second-chance romance with werewolves, but more importantly has one of my favorite tropes of found family. While I found it a bit meandering in parts and had a hard time getting into it, the writing was still beautiful and is a great addition to TJ Klune's other amazing LGBTQ+ books.

I was hesitant to read this at first because of the age gap and the fact that they met when the younger was 10 (older was 16), and the younger “imprinted” on the older when he was 10 as well. But I’m glad I gave into my trust in TJ Klune because this book, like all of his writing, is just so amazing.

The deepest theme of the book is found family, so if that’s something you like this book is definitely for you. It’s also about overcoming abuse (physical, emotion…all of it) and rising above those determined to break you. It’s also, even in the face of my initial wariness at their ages, and some (what would in almost every other story be alarming and Not Good, but works here for various reasons) high tier possessiveness, a very swoony romance.

If you’re a fan of TJ Klune and/or shifter romances…please give this one a try. You won’t be disappointed

Tj Klune does it again! I absolutely love how rich with emotion all of his books are and I will never not want to read what he writes because of that depth of emotion in all of his books!

Read if you like:
✨ Fantasy
🐺 Unlikely Friendships
🏡 Found Family
💋 Friends to Lovers
🥈Second Chance Romances

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of Wolfsong. I absolutely loved House on the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door so I was excited to read another book by TJ Klune. Wolfsong is the first in a series of four books. While I enjoyed this book it was not my favorite book by this author. There were parts that were repetitive or confusing. I read it quickly but wasn't always super eager to jump back in. The writing is beautiful and I loved the character of Ox. The found family troupe and the setting were both excellent.

Thank you Net Galley for the eARC of this book!

I am a big fan of TJ Klune, but this was just not for me.

Shoutout to TJ Klune for consistently being one of my favourite authors. Very thankful that I got a chance to read this and I look forward to reading more of their works in the future.


Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review.

Wolfsong by TJ Klune is a heartwarming and emotionally resonant story about found family, love, and acceptance. The book follows Ox Matheson, a young man who has been struggling with his identity and self-worth since his father abandoned him when he was 12. When Ox meets the Bennett family, a group of werewolves who live in the small town of Green Creek, he begins to find a place where he belongs.

Ox's relationship with Joe Bennett, the youngest of the Bennett children, is the heart of the story. Joe is kind, gentle, and accepting, and he helps Ox to see his own worth. The two boys slowly fall in love, and their relationship is both tender and passionate.

In addition to the romance, Wolfsong also explores themes of grief, trauma, and healing. Ox has to come to terms with the trauma of his childhood, and he also has to learn to forgive his father. The book is ultimately a story about hope, and it shows how even the most broken people can find redemption and love.

Wolfsong is a well-written and engaging book. Klune's prose is beautiful and evocative, and he does a great job of creating a believable and sympathetic cast of characters. The book is also full of humor, and it will make you laugh out loud on more than one occasion.

Overall, Wolfsong is a heartwarming and unforgettable story that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. If you're looking for a book that will make you laugh, cry, and fall in love, then I highly recommend this one.

If only I could dive into the world of Ox...
I absolutely adored this novel. It was heartwarming, and heart wrenching. I laughed and cried in the same chapter and felt positively giddy at others.
Klune is an absolute master at melding story lines, positive social messages, and fantasy into one quick twist of a book. I will forever and always be a TJ Klune reader. Well done.

I find Klune's writing to be so cozy and comforting. This was no different, though the story itself wasn't my favorites of his work. I have a belief that people will have different books of Klune's that they love and relate to the best based on their own experience with the topic. I adored Under the Whispering Door due to my own grief and relationship with death. I think this novel is pretty similar; you'll love it if you can relate to this aspect.

While I can appreciate the detail and emotion that went into this story, it just didn't end up being for me. I love a paranormal/magical type romance, and have heard great things about this series and this book especially so I'm quite disappointed that I didn't end up liking it.

I do have to give TJ Klune a lot of brownie points for being so inclusive in this novel and making is so normal. It was never something that was made to seem like a pivotal talking point, people were just going about their lives and having both straight and queer relationships all in the same realm made it appear so much more natural than making a deliberate point of focusing on adding in inclusivity. 10/10 for that.

Really what ultimately just made me uncomfortable throughout this was the age differences. I'm not opposed to an age gap; in fact I think it can add a lot of depth to stories and make characters even closer. While I know that nothing really happened in this until all characters were above/at the age of consent, it just felt really really weird and uncomfortable to have those conversations even STARTING when they weren't at the age of consent. Like, yes. I know you can have thoughts and feelings at those ages. But if you are the adult and the other person is a MINOR you should never even be talking about it. That's weird. It was handled okay in this book, it just made me feel a bit off, which impacted my enjoyment of the book overall.

Wolfsong was originally published in 2016, and is now being republished with a brand new look on July 4, 2023. Thank you to TOR Publishing, NetGalley and the author for the digital advanced copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Last year, I read and loved The House in the Cerulean Sea. That made me read other books by TJ Klune.

Wolfsong is just as amazing as the others I've read.

I wasn't sure what to think of the characters at first but they all grew on me. Such a uniquely written story with unique characters. I'm definitely looking forward to continuing this series.

I received a copy of this book for review from NetGalley. I have to admit; I have read this book before, but it has been enough years that reading this copy is like starting all over again. If you are familiar with TJ Klune from the Unofficial Kindness Trilogy (House in the Cerulean Sea, etc.), you may think that he only writes soft, lovely books. He does write soft, loving books, but this is not one of those.
This book is laugh out loud funny, and the characters are so real that they've lived rent-free in my head for years. This book will also rip your heart out, run it over with a tractor, and then back up and run it over again. Then it will toss your broken and weeping heart to a pack of wolves will who lovingly pat it back into shape. And then poke it with a stick a few times. I loved this book (and this series) with all of my broken heart, but do not read this if you are fresh off of mourning someone, or if you are feeling fragile. (Unless you are the type to find this cathartic.) It is well written, beautiful, loving, and has moments of exceptional sweetness to balance out the pain. The found family that Ox and Joe create is top-notch, and I adore the whole mess of them Pack pack pack.

It’s clear to me that this book was one of Klune’s earlier works, but now repackaged and reprinted. But I can also say that there was a pull into this story, a compelling characterization that made me want to keep reading.

Honestly I couldn’t tell if the writing style was good because it highlighted Ox’s more “simplistic” mindset and way of thinking, or if the writing style was amateurish. So many sentences were short and kind of choppy. Paragraphs were shorter as well. There wasn’t as much description. But…it made the pages read so quickly. Even though the writing was simple, it was still effective.

Ox sees the world a bit differently than any other protagonist I can recall in my somewhat recent reads. There are so many layers to him, so he is deeper than most would give him credit for, but he doesn’t spend time waxing poetic about things. He just describes things as they are, for the most part. But he also sees certain emotions as colors, which makes me wonder if that’s just the easiest way for him to describe them, or if he actually has a form of synesthesia.

It was interesting that this book covered such a large amount of time. We get some time when Ox is 12 and his dad leaves, then it jumps forward, showing how he and his mom pull together and move forward, before showing how things really start to change when the Bennetts move in.

Most of the first half of the book covers this period from when Ox is 16-23, when things get very intense and dramatic, and everything changes. The rest of the book covers the Bennett pack split up and eventual return.

While there are moments where everything is pretty high stakes, most of the story honestly just feels like friendship and found family and the bonds that connect us all. So much of it just feels kind of cute and fluffy and easy-going. Aside from the moments of pain and drama and intensity, most of this book just feels like a warm hug.

And okay, I should point out that there is a big age difference between Ox and Joe. When they first meet Ox is 16 and Joe is 10, and the connection between them is pretty much immediate…something that often happens in stories that feature supernatural creatures such as werewolves. It doesn’t negate the fact that for a chunk of the book Ox is an adult and Joe is a minor, and Ox is experiencing lustful thoughts and urges towards the young man, which feels a little…yuck.

Still, overall, I read this book fairly quickly, and there are a number of characters I would like to know more about…so yes, I will be continuing this series. I think the rest of the series features folks who are of a more similar age, which will feel a bit less problematic to me. And look, it’s not that age gaps bother me–I’m four years older than my husband. What bothers me is that for nearly half the book, one of the pair is an adult, while the other is a teenager, a minor. When I was studying to be a teacher in the beginning of my college years, if there was a two year difference in age and one person was an adult and one was a minor, then it was never considered to be consensual, and legally was considered rape. Thankfully, Ox doesn’t really act on his thoughts and feelings for Joe until Joe is about to turn 18, but still, it just felt weird to me.

I typically really enjoy TJ Klune but very different reasons I chose to rate this book low. The story was convoluted. The ethical relationships of the characters was not morally sound in my opinion. With this being said I chose not finish this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC! I am just such a huge fan of everything TJ Klune writes. I would recommend this for any sci-fi/fantasy fans!

(A Spoiler-Free Review)

Having read two other novels by this author I knew one thing going into it: I was guaranteed an interesting queer romance! It’s always fun to go into a story knowing that it will have some sort of supernatural or fantasy element to throw a twist on the typical tales of love we’re used to reading, and Wolfsong did not disappoint.

This novel follows Oxnard - Ox - Matheson, a boy who seems to be as normal as they come for all intents and purposes. His dad left while he was young and his mother raised him most of his life in a small town. He’s a little slower to process than most others and it’s interesting to read things through Ox’s perspective as a few obvious-to-the-reader things don’t always click right away for him. It’s also written in short, concise thoughts, with speech often written in smaller clips, longer bits broken up the way Ox processes it. The writing style is different, but in a way that absolutely works for the character and place the story is coming from. And it’s that simplicity that makes Ox so endearing. No mastermind, Ox is driven by instinct and a desire to be a good friend, family member, and maybe even pack member as things take a turn for him after meeting Joe Bennett.

Joe is part of a well-known family of werewolves who used to live in Ox’s town. Ox is sixteen when he meets Joe, who is only 10 years old. But even at 10, Joe knows that there’s something different about Ox, that Ox is meant to be important to him - to all of the Bennetts. Ox doesn’t learn their family secret until a year later. After that, he has a lot of important choices to make - not the least of which is whether or not he wants to be accepted into this family as a member of their pack, with all the danger and uncertainty that currently entails.

It’s a lot for Ox to process. It’s a lot to decide. And as he grows closer with the Bennetts, as he grows up with them, he starts to realize that the bond between himself and Joe was a decade in the making yet somehow manages to blindside him when the realization hits him.

It’s a slow burn on the romance side, but while the idea of werewolves and fated mates is a running theme it’s far from the driving factor of the narrative. The story itself focuses more on the bonds of family, friends, and the friends who become family. It’s about building your own pack and surrounding yourself with people who will support you no matter what - people you’d trust with your life.

I loved finding out how humans could fit into the world of werewolves here, and more specifically the way Ox pushed his way into their world and, even as a human, began to shift the roles and rules of the pack. It’s a great twist on the usual lore that kept me intrigued from start to finish.

All in all, Wolfsong is a found family story with a fantasy twist, and it was a lot of fun learning and growing with Ox along the way.