A delightfully trippy tale that keeps the reader on their feet. Hoping to create some financial security, a teenager begins forging paintings similar to her mothers. Everything is going to plan until she starts to fall into the dangerous world of the paintings. This thriller of a read will be a delight for young readers who are a fan of horror and suspenseful stories.

This was a really interesting YA thriller. I like the premise of the story and felt like the overall execution was alright. I would encourage others to check it out, and I'm glad I got to read it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tantor Audio for sending me an early copy of this audiobook! All opinions are my own!

This is such a haunting and beautiful story, and I have no idea how to put my thoughts into words! From the very start I was compelled by Indigo and her backstory. It was so easy to root for her and start to want to fix everything for her so she wouldn't have to struggle anymore. But on top of that, the flashbacks to the past and the times in Wolfwood absolutely dragged me in as well.

The imagery of Wolfwood is so haunting and compelling, and the way it really combines with the flashbacks and parallels real life is so touching. The deeper themes of this book are ones that really pull at your heart, and I loved the way that it was all represented. Some of it was hard to experience, but I think that made the message of the book even more impactful. I love the healing that took place and the way both Indigo and her mother had their own journeys to take.

If you like magical realis and are looking for something moving and alluring, this is the book for you!

4.5 stars rounded up.

I usually try not to request arcs that are so close to the publish date but I'm so glad I did with this one! I loved that the MC is relatable (ymmv). Indigo is a teenager who lives in poverty in one of the most expensive cities in the world and struggles to make ends meet. But she has a talent for art and design and dreams of becoming a fashion designer someday. Her mother, Zoe, suffers from an unnamed mental illness (possibly depression and/or PTSD) and can't work to support either of them.

I liked that the author chose to portray how difficult poverty can be on a family. They live in a basement and help clean the building to lower the cost of rent, while Indigo has to work several other jobs to earn enough money to pay the bills. There's a scene where she doesn't have enough money to buy food at McDonalds and another where she can't afford outdoor concert tickets. At the art gallery where Indigo's mother will show her work, she tries her best to fit in with the rich kids. The writing makes you understand how she feels so out of place, but yet she tries her best to fit in. And her efforts (mostly) work. I think these were all portrayed realistically.

Another strong point of the story is the portrayal of mental illness. Indigo's mother, Zoe, is very depressed and can't find it in herself to work on her famed Wolfwood paintings, which propelled her to fame when she was younger. As much as it was frustrating to read about how Zoe physically and mentally can't find it in herself to get out of the house and support them both, I think it's a very realistic portrayal of clinical depression. (Coming from someone who has firsthand experience.)

I also loved that the narrator, Annalyse McCoy, was absolutely perfect and brought Indigo's voice to life. It added an authentic, richer layer to the narrative itself.

The scenes in Wolfwood, when Indigo mentally dives into the paintings, weren't the best, imo. But then again, I understand things too literally sometimes, so I wasn't quite sure what was going on most of the time with Zoe and the girls. They're running away from danger and they're trying to capture the wolf? I pictured these scenes as Indigo having some kind of trance or mental breakdown and imagines herself in an Alice in Wonderland style world while she paints. She comes out with bruises and cuts from physically "being" in Wolfwood, but in the real world, they aren't really explained. Maybe she's reliving her mother's trauma? Or she's experiencing extreme stress which causes her to self-harm? I think there's different ways to interpret these portions of the novel.

Anyway, I really liked this novel and I hope to read more from Marianna Baer!

Thank you to Tantor Audio and NetGalley for this arc.

I loved Wolfwood, one of my favourite YA books of the year so far. This book has a fresh voice, a wonderful teen heroine, and a vivid world split between reality and magic.

Indigo Serra is the daughter of famous artist Zoe Serra.  Zoe has been unable to paint for years, and they have been homeless or living in poverty for years.  Now, there’s renewed interest in Zoe’s art: paintings of a violent world she created called Wolfwood.

When Zoe refuses to create new paintings, Indigo takes over, forging her mothers work — and becoming transported into daydreams about Wolfwood that become more and more real the better she gets at painting.  

Indigo is one of my new favourite teen characters. She’s tough and smart but vulnerable and flawed. She really felt like a teen: full of vibrance and yearning, at a turning point between childhood and adulthood, and caught between the responsibility of protecting her mom and resentment (but not bitterness) at how difficult her life has been.  Baer had me rooting for her, feeling her joy at first love and cringing when she made certain decisions.  

Indigo’s emotional journey and striving to pull her family out of poverty, to make friends and do something bigger with her life, had me completely hooked.  The scenes in Wolfwood are creepy and vivid, without pushing fully into horror.  I enjoyed Annalyse McCoy’s narration, which put me completely in Indigo’s head while listening, and the time seemed to fly by.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tantor Audio for my review copy of this audiobook.

Thank you to Abrams and Marianna Baer for allowing me to listen to Wolfwood as an audiobook ARC.

This had the potential for a 5 star book. I was thinking it would be a 5 star book, until there was a key explanation I was looking for that was not wrapped up. It STILL bugs me! If there's another book, I'll change this to a 5 star, but as it stands, I'm at a 4.5/5 star. If you NEED your books wrapped up likely you won't like this.

HOWEVER, I do think this book has a lot of fantastic qualities that kept me hooked:
- The overall plot: Indigo and her mother Zoe are barely scrapping by. Zoe, before Indigo was born, released Wolfwood, a series of painted portraits showing how 4 girls hunt down a wolf in wolfwood. This fantastical world hooked people, but it was unfinished. Zoe is given a chance to finish it and she refuses. Indigo knows to survive, she must finish Wolfwood. However, what Zoe did not tell Indigo, is that Wolfwood becomes real when you paint it. You enter the vicious jungle, been the clones of the main three girls, and you can get hurt.
- The relationships: I really did like most of the relationships in this book and I disliked the relationships I think we are meant to dislike.
- Pacing: this felt FAST. My heart was pounding the majority of the book, until the end.

The. magical realism is there, you root for Indigo and only want the best for her in the end, and you want to help the folks of Wolfwood. If you aren't into pop culture references, you probably won't like this. I feel like this also had some interesting undertones talking about classism that I think are still prevalent today. Honestly, I'd go back into this world again in a heartbeat!

I really wanted to like this more than I did. The concept was unique and interesting but the execution fell flat for me. I love magical realism in books like this but I found it lacking here. Nobody was really questioning how or why there was suddenly magic nor did we ever really get an explanation as to how it exists or works. The sudden transition from real world to Wolfwood was jarring and hard to keep up with sometimes. There were things about this book that I liked too. I loved the prose and how the author was able to capture paintings so vividly with words. The main character was amazing. Indigo had a horrible life but never gave up trying to make it a better one for herself and her mom. My heart broke for Indigo's mother and her struggle with mental health. So while this one just didn't work for me I'd love to read something else by this author.

Thank you netgalley and the publishers for this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Wolfwood by Marianna Baer
5/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

•••Spoiler free review below•••

I did not know what to expect when starting this but I was hooked from the very first scene. I felt like I was with our main character, Indigo, while she painted and was left guessing at the conclusion until the very end.

Read this book if you like:
- magical realism
- electric descriptions of artwork
- strong mother/daughter bonds
- flashbacks to move the current day plot forward
- a look into the art world in NY
- a hint of romance

Wolfwood will be released on March 28th and if it's not already on your tbr, it should be!
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Special thanks to Tantor Audio for sharing a free copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

Indigo needs money and, to get that, she needs her mom to finish Wolfwood, her art series from years ago. They’re drowning in debt and barely surviving, the expected sale of the art could save them. But her mom refuses to finish them. So Indigo takes the art into her own hands. But Wolfwood isn’t just art and it is not at all what she expected.

Plot: 3.5/5
This story is told mostly from Indigo’s present perspective but we also get some chapters from her Mom’s in the 80’s/90’s. I really liked the parallels to the experience. I think there were a lot of moving parts in Indigo’s life which made it all a little hard to keep track of. And it was nearly unbelievable that she managed to do so much each day. The repetition of her life and the same “new” issues, created a bit of a drag at points.
The mystery of Wolfwood was really fascinating and as well as the part it played in the story.
During Zoe’s plot line, we also get to see some uncomfortable conversations about artistic colonialism and white artists in other countries suppressing cultures. She’s in a very manipulative and toxic relationship (who is revealed to be older than he said)

I felt a little weird with both Indigo and Zoe’s relationships being with older men when they’re 17. Indigos isn’t as bad cause he’s at least recently 18 and they know each other. But for Zoe, he is secretly 24 and said he was ~18 (can’t remember exact but it was closer to her age).

Characters: 4/5
Indigo works tirelessly to provide for her and her disabled mother. She clearly is taking on way too much for a 17 year old but that’s just her life. The book has a very sex positive perspective (not in a graphic way but it is present. I did question the age of Josh and then also Khai but once I realized she was only 17, I couldn’t remember their ages (finding that info in an ALC is near impossible).

Zoe has some pretty intense PTSD regarding Wildwood. It played a huge part in her life and ability to create. She also beat cancer (?) and has had pain and fatigue issues ever since.

Kai was also a really complex character and his brother’s drug addiction/his struggles to forgive himself for their current relationship added a ton of depth. However the other side characters all felt pretty one dimensional.

Writing: 3/5
The magic was mixed into the world fairly well, it is kind of odd that Indigo isn’t totally fazed by the development. But it seems like it’s all kind of a metaphor for mental health and trauma. The first few Wolfwood scenes were so immersive, I really saw it through Indigo’s eyes. But the more we got, the more repetitive it felt. And Baer’s direct descriptive style felt very flat in the jungle/fantasy setting.
Indigos internal monologue did feel a bit repetitive at times too as she often repeated the same fears.

There are also some nuanced conversations about homelessness. A character says a homeless man’s opinion doesn’t matter because he’s homeless (re: a racist comment). The MC makes a point to clarify that it’s shitty of the homeless guy to say that stuff but just because he’s homeless, doesn’t mean he isn’t human and doesn’t get opinions.

Overall: 3.5/5

I don’t think this is the authors fault but the cover art does make the MC look potentially Asian which is a little misleading at the MC is white. However, I do think the author does a good job on page of showing diversity, putting her characters into uncomfortable and nuanced situations, and having the MC acknowledge her privilege as a white woman even though she is in poverty.

Thank you so much for letting listen to this audiobook. This story is so good. This is a very special book. On the first glance it looks like a ya romance with some horror elements, but this is so much Moore.

Wolfwood was a pleasant surprise. I was drawn in to the concept of the book, a teen girl who decides to paint her mother's designs to get themselves out of poverty but when she starts painting the Wolfwood paintings, she is transported INTO Wolfwood and sustains injuries and has memories of Wolfwood after she is done painting.

It is not entirely unique for drawings to come to life, but this was a different take on that trope. It deals with trauma and comes from the point of view of a struggling family, just a single mother and her daughter. Honestly, we don't see many actual depictions of poverty in YA novels.

I really appreciated that while Indigo, the daughter, and Zoe, the mother, are poor, Indigo acknowledges that they do have connections and have some privilege due to them being white women. I appreciated that because being poor is a different experience for people of color then it is white people and the author acknowledging that is well appreciated.

Overall I definitely think this book is worth a read (or listen as I really enjoyed the narrator's performance). If you enjoy magical realism with dark elements then this book is for you. There is definitely descriptions of gore, but not OVERLY gore-y in my opinion, but I do like horror so take that with a grain of salt I suppose.

3.5/5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley for providing early access to the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

The blurb represents the book accurately: 17-year-old Indigo begins forging her mother Zoe's Wolfwood paintings out of financial desperation, only to discover that the paintings have supernatural properties, somehow pulling her into the world of the painting. The narrative switches between Indigo's day-to-day life of scrambling to make ends meet and tiptoeing around her mother's depressive episodes, her experiences inside the paintings, and short flashbacks of her mother's past and the traumatic events that informed the paintings.

A major theme of the story is Indigo's response to her mother's declining mental health and to their poverty. She doesn't want anyone to know the depth of their struggles, like the fact that they live in a run-down basement or that they've been homeless before or that Indigo works multiple jobs while her mother is too depressed to get off the couch. Indigo feels pressured to shoulder more and more responsibility, even to the point of accepting real-world injuries as a consequence of entering the magical paintings. More than anything, this is a story about the consequences of failing to ask for and accept help, the futility of keeping secrets, and the dangers of trying to fix someone else's problems.

The book is at its strongest in the real world, keeping stakes high for Indigo with constant financial pressure and tight deadlines. It's at its weakest in Wolfwood, where the inevitable action sequences are both muddled and flat and where the stakes are nebulous rather than urgent. The violence feels campy when compared to the more mundane horrors of struggling to cover rent, especially since they usually heal quickly or are revealed to be just visions. Many of the Wolfwood painting portions lag, despite being heavily summarized. The characters generally feel fleshed-out and multidimensional, though unfortunately the three sisters of the paintings/past were the least interesting to me.

On diversity: although the cover art cues the protagonist as East Asian, the story makes it clear she's white. I don't think this is the author's fault, but it is potentially misleading. Some of the supporting characters are people of the color, like the Black upstairs neighbors, the half-Japanese love interest, and the wealthy half-black (?) friend, Ravi. Not only are these characters financially diverse, but they also talk about their experiences of being othered. A few characters are mentioned to be gay, though their experiences aren't part of the story at all. The rest of the major characters are either explicitly or assumed straight and white.

Overall, I found the story interesting and engaging, but the lackluster fabulist portions held it back. I'd recommend it to fans of Melissa Albert, especially Our Crooked Hearts. I could also see pitching it to fans of "reincarnated into a video game" Webtoons and manga, since many of those elements are here.

Content warnings: mentions of drug addiction, parental neglect, character death including parental death, not the main character), poverty, homelessness, blood and injury, suicidal ideation, a pretty graphic depiction of an attempted suicide, car accidents, depression and mental illness, emotional manipulation and abuse by a romantic partner, and a minor being tricked into a relationship with an older man.