** spoiler alert ** Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for providing an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow, this book took me for a ride. It was not what I expected. It could also be named "The Larkin Family and all the psychopathic killers around them."
The book covers 60 years in the history of the Larkins, a middle-class family with six children. We see the kids grow up and go through life while dealing with some major challenges. Lots of character development, mental illness discussion, serial killings, and some pretty messed up stuff. (would you mail your mother your poop or all of your teeth? how about both?)
If you like true crime and serial killer lore, you will particularly enjoy it, but the book is not really about the crimes and criminals. I think it is more about what makes people do horrible things and how often ordinary citizens come in contact with killers and molesters without knowing it, and how the "ordinary citizens" sometimes end up being monsters.

Starting in the summer of 1951, this book follows the Larkin family through to today. The four siblings - Myra, Alec, Lexy and Fiona - take us through their lives as they take drastically different paths.

This is a long book that is in turn interesting and dull. The random "famous people" the siblings interact with felt comical to me at times and overall, I did not feel like it added anything to the story. The story itself had a lot of promise, but it just felt too long at times.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Available March 19, 2024.

Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp ⭐️⭐️💫

I’m pretty mixed on how I feel about this one. I oscillated between interested and bored/cringe. I struggled with the usage of some wording and cringed often even if it was true to the times. Think of every word or description that might’ve been used at one point that is not politically correct now and know that it’s in this book for seemingly no reason. I didn’t feel these instances provided any meaningful insight to plot or characters, and it was more distracting to me.

The description boasted this book as a “harrowing multigenerational saga about a family harboring a serial killer in their midst…” Because of this, I was expecting a more on the nose story about just that. However, this book was more nuanced; the author was more focused on the exploration of how close we all come to danger regularly.

This novel could’ve been edited down a lot and still got its point across. The author liked to over describe, which left this book feeling very character heavy without significant growth or plot points. I will give credit as every time I was getting really bored, the author would reign it back in and grab my attention again, which kept me reading.

If you like multigenerational sagas spanning several decades, heavy character driven novels, or books that are more nuanced, this might be a hit for you.

I loved this book. Multigenerational saga with serial killer in their midst. The characters were well developed and believable. A book that was hard to put down.

This story is definitely a stark and brutal tale of one family over the course of 50 years. This book is not going to give you the resolution you may love, or any sort at all actually. It will leave you with a never ending sense of ennui.
Now that being said I feel that I couldn’t have read this book if I had connected with and loved the characters. Something as brutally dark as this has to leave you without a deep emotion. At least for me it does.
This is 100 percent a certain style book which. Is targeted to a niche audience.
I received a ARC of this book, all opinions are my own.

Myra is the oldest of a large Catholic family in 1951 when she meets a man claiming to be Mickey Mantle. The event shapes her youth, as a triple homicide occurs later that night. As her siblings grow and also leave home, her brother Alex becomes more isolated.

If you’re a fan of character driven family sagas, this is one for you. It’s very long.. in my opinion, slightly longer than it needed to be, but once you get into all the characters you don’t mind. There’s some cameos by real life serial killers that you may pick up if you’re a true crime fan. Overall a very interesting character study and saga.

“It’s like a door rising out of the earth, the simplest of doors, wooden, with a tarnished brass knob. You either grab hold of it, turn the knob and walk through the f*cking thing, or you don’t.”

Wolf at the Table comes out 3/19.

Wolf at the Table is not light reading. For some reason, I thought it would be a thriller or more of a psychological suspense based on the description, but this is a dark, brutal look at violence and trauma. Rapp's characters suffer, and the space his novel occupies is not one to be entered into lightly. It deals extensively with murder, mental illness, sexual abuse, grooming, and more. The world Rapp built around the Larkin family is unforgiving in so many ways, and it's difficult to get through at times.

But it's also fascinating. Wolf at the Table is bleak, make no mistake, but it's compulsively readable. Myra is a wonder, the reliable sibling and child who shoulders the brunt of everyone's pain while constantly pushing away her own; she is an everyday hero and as the heart of the novel, she makes the journey into the darkness worth taking, exposing the more hopeful moments as the gifts they are and assuring that Rapp is not just hammering us over the head with devastation. His language is specific and moving, and his characters are full and actualized and real.

I will remember this book for a long while.

I expected Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp to be dark, but the plot was not quite what I expected based on the description. The book peers into the lives of the Larkin family, including staunch matriarch Ava, quiet and damaged Donald, along with their children Myra, Alec, Fiona, Joan and Lexy. Their story is not a happy one; descriptors that come to mind include gritty, sad, harrowing and disturbing.

We get slices of their lives over the course of 50 years and told from mainly Myra's and Alec's points of view. There is a bit from Ava and Fiona, but I would have liked to hear more about Lexy, Fiona and Joan. The theme seems to be how close their lives are brushed with violence, but some members are closer than others. The strong writing carries the book as we visit the Larkins over the timeline. Although parts are difficult to read, I will call it 3.5 stars rounded up.

I will recommend this to readers who like dark family dramas.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I think this book suffers from its marketing. The synopsis promises a “harrowing multigenerational saga about a family harboring a serial killer in their midst” which sounds like my entire alley. Of course, if the marketing was truthful and billed it as the Forrest Gump of true crime, it probably wouldn’t sell as well.

I enjoyed aspects of this story, but it was entirely too long and needed a clearer focus. It felt like Rapp wrote this for himself, not the reader - the prose too dense and self-indulgent. Which may be great for him, but not so much for me.

I think a lot of these vignettes work as short stories, but they don’t add up cohesive narrative.

The story of the Larkin family of Elmira, NY. What a mess they are. Myra is the oldest and the most likeable but she just seems to go along with things. She is probably the most likeable. Her brother, Alec, is horrible and mean and leaves when he is 19. There is also Fiona, a failed actress, Joan who has a mental handicap and Lexy who seems to be the one that "makes it." Lexy and Fiona are barely mentioned and the story goes back and forth between Alex and Myra but there are years in between each chapter so you are meant to fill in the gaps. The story takes place from 1951 to 2010. A lot of places mentioned in NY were familiar to me so that made it interesting but there just didn't seem to be a lot of emotion or dialogue. At one point I thought a character was going to be killed and I was good with that. The author just didn't make me care enough.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown and Co. for providing me with a digital copy.

I pushed myself to get to 46% before I finally stopped reading. just can't finish this one. I was really hoping the emotional void would be filled, but at hasn't been at this point. Rapp's writing is fantastic, but there has to be more depth for the impact that a story like this should have on me. It also felt extremely lengthy for the portion I read.

I do think this would be a good fit for someone who is interested in reading how close we are to evil at times, unaware, and about how siblings can differ wildly from one another.

Mixed emotions on this one. I alternated between being engrossed and uninterested. If only there had been more dialogue! I was surprised at the lack of it as the author is a play writer. I never skipped those parts because there was some action and consequence. The prose was endless and I was missing entire sections (particularly at the Alec and Ronan sections). Myra’s tale was the best particularly as it connected in to historical events and there was more dialogue in her sections. Way too long and frankly pretty depressing. Written like a memoir, it covered a rather uninspiring, dysfunctional family who happened to have a serial killer amongst them which they did nothing about.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a very good book, it is the slice of life for the Larkin family, a large Catholic brood that has its ups and downs over a period spanning from 1951-2010, the author has certainly captured the essence of this family and brought them and their struggles to life. Myna is 13 when she meets a boy who she is led to believe by him, is Mickey Mantle, as a reader this scene really leapt off the pages you could almost feel the malice in this fellow (who was not Mantle). The story is told through the point of view of certain of the people in the family, Myra, Fiona, Lexy, Alec and Joan, there is a sixth, a baby, who passed away at the beginning of the story. Myrna is the eldest and the most grounded, Fiona is a hippie who never seems to settle down (or want to), Alec is probably one of the most despicable characters I have read in quite some time, he has a mean streak from the get go and it gets worse over time, Joan has mental health issues and requires life long care. The mom has her point of view at times as well, her and her husband kicked Alec out of the house when he was young (this raises the question of nature vs nurture). Myrna marries Denny a man she fell in love with quite quickly, he ends up leaving her during a blizzard and she finally tracks him down several years later, he's living with another woman, who turns out to be a nurse, Denny has mental health issues, which appear in their son, and his son in later chapters. Myrna is a nurse who eventually becomes a nurse at the State Prison during the time John Wayne Gacy was to be executed for his crimes. As Alec's timeline advances he turns into a very dark character, stealing whatever he can and becoming a serial killer, his timeline is the most disturbing to read. I would recommend especially if you enjoy family sagas. Thanks to #Netgalley and #LittleBrownandCo for the ARC.

I have mixed feelings for this one so I will just be bulleting them:

- Loved the writing style, very dialogue heavy
- Loved the time span of 50 years
- Loved getting to know how someone in the family became a serial killer
- Did not like the length, way too long for me
- Lacked so much emotion it was hard to have any feelings

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Special thanks to Little Brown and Company and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

This book surprised me. I didn't expect to like it, but I really did. I started out not knowing where this book would take me but I'm so glad I stuck with it because I truly really liked it. It's about a family and it spans a few decades and hops storylines but in a good way. The family characters were very well developed and well I love a book about family, especially this one.

4 stars. Highly recommend

I found this book mesmerizing and fascinating as I read it in its entirety in one snowy day.

Rapp creates very diverse characters all in one family. The siblings, five in total, turn out to be markedly disparate indeed. There are several characters introduced and examined in the book - the parents, their five children, the main character's spouse, their child. So many of these characters are truly developed throughout the book's plot.

I really enjoyed the timeline of the book, which spans 6 decades, taking the reader on a trip from 1951 to 2010. We travel with these characters from upstate New York all the way to Los Angeles, CA. Being from Illinois, I found it intriguing that locations such as Marion, Carbondale, Joliet, and Chicago were components of the setting, also.

Probably the aspect I liked the most about this book though had to be all of the topics that Rapp broached - abuse in the Catholic church, serial killers, handicapped siblings, schizophrenia, sports (professional baseball and collegiate track), the NY art scene. If someone would have handed me a book and told me to read it and that it was going to be about all of those topics, I probably would have just shook my head and said No Thanks. Rapp makes this work though, does he ever make it work.

I don't remember the last time I read a book so quickly. I love historical and pop culture references, and this plot is packed full of those. You have the character of Mickey Mantle (or perhaps the illusion of Mickey Mantle's character) playing a part. You have several baseball references to the Yankees and then also several to the Chicago Cubs. You've got John Wayne Gacy's lethal injection at Statesville Correctional Institute in 1994. The serial killer, Richard Speck's slaughter of nurses in 1966 plays into the plot, also.

Truly, while reading the book and also after finishing it, I thought it was genius how the author created these characters and was able to tell their family stories all the while weaving so much mainstream culture history into it.

Thank you, NetGalley and Little, Brown & Co. / Hatchette Book Group for the opportunity to preview this ARC. I highly recommend it.

I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley. This book, as the title implies, is dark and gritty. The story starts with a large Catholic family of 6 children and we follow them as the members peel off and fall away. A brother dies as a child which sets the stage in a sense for everyone to handle the future in their own way. One sister is disabled and will stay with mom forever, another sister floats off, she is a con and a hippie, yet another leaves to start a new, well to do life, a brother drifts leaving one to be the peacekeeper, conduit for the family shop always tries to do right by others. It’s almost like the roles in an alcoholic family come to life. The books spans 1950’s to 2000 and gives nods to events of the time, including several serial killers. There are near misses with evil, there is a deep immorality in one character borne of trauma. It was intense and unexpected.

(Contains spoilers) The Wolf at the Table is an engaging family saga with the unexpected addition of... real-life serial killers? At first it was like, hey, is this supposed to be Richard Speck? Weird! But when later an (unnamed) John Wayne Gacy character is added to the story it seemed kind of, well, absurd. (I still can’t decide if it’s off-putting or intriguing.) There are other historically accurate elements thrown in that make this a unusual mix of reality and imagination — but not in a historical fiction or true crime kind of way. Whatever it is, it works. Hurray for this complex, uncanny, disturbing and fantastic read.

In Wolf at the Table, Adam Rapp spins a violent family saga based on elements of his mother’s life. Although this book contains more than its share of murders—including appearances from John Wayne Gacy—I found this book to be a fascinating exploration of how encounters with violence and evil can send people on such wildly different trajectories. Even better, the characters in this book aren’t simple fodder for inspiration. The characters are achingly fallible.

The Larkin family of Elmira, New York, appear to be ordinary from the outside, at least when we first meet them in 1951. We watch eldest daughter Myra have a stolen afternoon of teenage happiness with a cute boy in a nice car (who may or may not be Mickey Mantle). That night, however, a family on the same street as the Larkins is brutally murdered. Myra and her brother, Alec, witness the bodies being wheeled out of their neighbor’s house. Alec lashes out at his sister with his precocious cruelty when she asks him why he’s out of the house. We learn later that this is not the first time a member of the Larkin family is touched by unforgivable violence and that there’s a reason for Alec’s constant brutishness.

We then start to jump forward in time. Each time we land, we find Myra, Alec, and Myra’s son, Ronan, just before something bad happens. There are vicious family fights. There are brushes with Gacy. There’s schizophrenia and abandonment. There is death. From that day in 1951 in Elmira, the Larkins pinball around and into each other. Myra tries to reach out to her increasingly lost brother while wrestling with her husband’s mental illness and her increasingly poor health. Alec falls further and further into darkness, periodically surfacing to inflict hurt on the world that hurt him. Ronan’s fortunes rise and fall with the illness he inherited from his father.

Wolf at the Table is a bleak book but I couldn’t put it down. I was engrossed by the ways in which the characters intersected with and diverged from each other. I deeply appreciated its grit. Nothing comes easily in this book, creating an atmosphere of unflinching honesty. But this book isn’t all pain and sorrow. There are moments of stunning grace: unconditional parental love, a good death, revelation, justice. These moments make the metaphorical storm clouds disperse for a little while to give us a glimpse of what life could be if the characters renounce the temptation to hurt others the way they’ve been hurt, if they can find and accept help instead of causing destruction, and if they can transform their wounds into strength. This is an amazing book.

From the first page, there is a sense of foreboding in this book. The title sets the tone. As I was reading this book, I had no idea where the author would take me but I was along for the ride. I thought the story was enthralling. Most of the characters were very well developed. The family could have been my neighbors, which was his point. Hopping between storylines was very well done. I find myself with some questions about the ending which is why I knocked it down 0.5 star. I strongly recommend this book but it isn't for the faint of heart. 4.5 stars.

Many thanks to Little Brown and NetGalley for an advanced readers copy.