I picked up this book because the concept intrigued me, and it was perfect for my world reading challenge, as the story is set in a coastal town in Sweden during the summer of 2004. However, I hadn't realized how long it actually was—just over 600 pages. It felt a little daunting, but the premise kept me going: A group of friends whose summer plans involve LAN parties and chilling are abruptly interrupted when an unknown entity descends on them from the sky during a meteor shower, They are forced to confront their deepest fears and darkest nightmares to survive a foe unlike anything they have known before.

The book is an apocalyptic horror full of tension and survival, inspired by "Stranger Things." While I have only seen bits and pieces of the show, it seems to align pretty well with the book, and "Alien" While I haven’t seen the whole franchise, but I have seen the original, and it's a fairly perfect comparison.

The narration was quite confusing; I struggled with who was actually telling the story. In the end, I broke it down into two categories: the main group, which had a few narrators whose voices blended into one another, and the extra characters, such as the fire chief and the Home Guard. This helped me understand the narrative better.

It took a while for the book to pick up—I would say around the 100-page mark—before it truly kicked into gear. After that, it was amazing: deeply unsettling and thrilling, keeping me on the edge of my seat as I flew through the pages, desperate to find out what happened next. Despite the confusion in parts and the slow start, this novel was incredible; the tragedy and horror kept me eagerly wanting to know what would happen next.

Hidden Gem


Wow. 


Slow world building, fully immersive, highly atmospheric, unforgettable, coming of age sci-fi/horror/thriller. A hidden gem of sci-fic masterpiece.


If you enjoy living in the book while you read, this is an absolute must. Felt like I was walking these streets along with them and sharing their anxiety of the unknown. If there's such a thing as a fever dream, this is a fever nightmare for those involved. 


Quick Synopsis out of Goodreads:


“As the sun sets and darkness creeps in, the once familiar surroundings of their hometown become a battleground. The friends' summer plans of LAN parties, mopeds and youthful rebellion are shattered by an unknown enemy that descends upon them with merciless ferocity. Forced to confront their deepest fears and darkest nightmares, they must band together to survive a foe unlike anything anyone has ever seen.”


You can tell this book is a labor of love, so much time, research, and detail were poured into these pages. A whopping 641 pages, it's a rabbit hole filled with time lore, video game references, pop culture and characters with their own mini worlds built in, and mopeds, so many mopeds. It was fun, frustrating, nostalgic, and mysterious. A true saga. 


It took me months to finish this book. At first it was very slow world setting, personally I enjoy world building, slow burn but I could see how some people would think it's too much or too slow, it can be intimidating but it was perfection for me. As this helps me immerse myself into the book and become another character in the tale. This felt it was written with us nerds in mind. It felt nostalgic to everything I love and hold dear. I didn't want it to end. 


If you enjoy Stranger Things, Battle Royale, and any of the Cloverfield movies, this book right here will scratch that itch. 


I would like to thank NetGalley and Oskar Östlund for the opportunity to read this e-book masterpiece.

Definitely not my favorite. Although it had a unique setting and plot, it just carried on too much with the mindane unnecessary details and seemed to never end. Several times I ended up skipping pages, a bit bored. I think with some refinement, it could be a much better novel.

It's a somber, evocative novel that talks about Erik and his friends in the haunting Swedish town of Skutskär, where coming of age seems intertwined with the shadows of something mysterious and threatening. Oskar Östlund invites us into a world so real yet surreal at once-a combination of folklore and myth in raw teenage life.

In The Wolf's Time, we follow Erik and his closely-knit circle of friends as they move through what will prove to be a crucial summer. We are indeed being placed in the small industrial town of Skutskär in Sweden, following them through every trial of being a teenager and bonding over an uncomfortable supernatural presence that has put them in its scope. The community, the ancient forests, and even Erik's personal demons will play as compelling backdrops against this twisted Norse-inspired saga. Events and myths and legends of the old Norse gods are interwoven into one line of growing dread. Their lives are made to struggle through not just typical adolescent adversities but even sinister portents that something darker, more primeval is stirring around them.

Erik is our protagonist-a quiet, introspective mind repeatedly pressed to the limit. Tormented by memories, longing constitutes the fragility and complexity of youth. The psychology of Erik is subtly detailed: much feeling, little saying. Interactions with friends and girlfriends denote a young man caught somewhere between the innocence of a boy and a maturing self-awareness. His relationship with Sandra, this older girl who fascinates and terrorizes him, is poignantly exposed in order to bring out first love, self-doubt, and imbalances of power.

By contrast, Sandra is a mix of magnetism and mystery; thus, the attraction becomes thrillingly dangerous for Erik. Fierce yet brittle, her personality walks a taut high wire, and the way she interrelates with Erik suggests an important but troubled role in his growth. This duality, deep-caring yet emotionally elusive, made her a strong influence upon Erik, propelling him toward self-discovery and against the fears within himself.

The supporting characters are Erik's friends, such as Oscar and Johan, who form part of the indispensable support within the world he lives. Each one of them brings another aspect in thematic development in the story. He writes, "One thinks of fierce loyalty to one another, the shared history, the quirks of each-Johan's charisma and lightness, Oscar's acute sensitivity-in order to show with fleeting beauty the bitter sweetness of young friendships." This is a shared journey through this summer and into the emotional currents that will be traveled by them-a time in one's life that speaks to something about bonds that define and shape us.

Throughout the course of the novel, The Wolf's Time, friendship would more be of a foreground disposition rather than a background condition as far as the life of Erik is concerned. The ties of friendship that exist between Erik and his set of friends tie them together in some give-and-take of strengths and individual insecurities.
Against the comparative untamed beauty of the forest, the industrial shadows threatening Skutskär provide a potent almost elemental sense of place. The tension between human progress and the primal force that is the natural world gets reinforced.
Influenced by Norse mythology, the novel plunges deep into fate, death, and transformation. With the mounting presence of the wolves, Erik's journey interlinks with snippets of mythology insinuating that some forces are closer than we may actually think.
In the passage of Erik from childhood into the unsure cruelty of young manhood, weighted down by his emotional confusedness, lie openness to young love, painful shifts in identity, and yearning for acceptance. Delicately, Östlund handles these themes without ever once making readers feel anything but deep empathy for the struggles and joys of his characters.

Östlund's language is ornate, Disturbingly beautiful; it maintains the mythic origins of this story. One feels his prose to be lush and atmos­pheric: the forests around Skutskär, smoky townscapes, the almost tangible presence of the Baltic Sea, imagined with a great deal of vividness. The use of figures of speech-especially metaphor-adds further dimensions to the reading experience, giving Erik's world a quality of magical realism bordering on the mythological. This novel has a deliberate pacing since it often meanders from some contemplative moments into an outburst of action, truly reflective of Erik's turbulent emotions and growing fear.

Östlund often takes advantage of a third-person limited point of view, one firmly fixed upon Erik; he whisks the reader down deep into Erik's inner being in such a way that instant empathy is created. Even the most innocuous scenes through his eyes beat with tension and emotion, feeding into the overarching tension of the tale with which we become abruptly submerged in his psychological journey.

The Wolf's Time is a haunting journey into the darkness that lurks in myth and in the heart. Östlund interlaces a coming-of-age story with rich layers of folklore, youth, and existential unease. Character complexities, world building, and the blend of horror and myth are strong points in the book. Sometimes, though, it is really slow. Such pacing indeed fits the atmospheric tension following with every page. Intimate and epic, this coming-of-age horror, The Wolf's Time, claws into real questions about one's human nature, nature around them, and the overall fate that is in store. I would say, without disparaging other work in the realms of mythic horror, that The Wolf's Time is a virtual cousin to such novels as John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In, in which quotidian settings suddenly crash with supernatural elements in manners both disturbing and revelatory.

Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
Writing Style: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) – Evocative and richly textured.
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5) – Compelling, though Sandra’s character could benefit from further exploration.
World-Building: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) – The setting is meticulously crafted and atmospheric.

Fans of dark, atmospheric fiction with elements taken from both mythology and transitions in life will be the ones most pleased with this book. Where does one even start with Scandinavian horror and mythological fiction.

This give's me Stranger Things vibes! It's a chill summer in Sweden, whick actually is where I live, and all of a suddenly everything goes dark and the nightmare is a fact. I enjoyed this alot but I do think it's a bit too long. Thank you for the chance to read and review.!

Atmospheric. Tense. A gorgeous cover. A perfect setting. 10/10, highly recommend you pick this one up! Thank you for the eARC.

Well...I finally read an horror story written by Oskar Östlund and I can't say I read it straight through, but had to read it every now and then. Reading books in between reading Oskar. It was a 17hour 37 minute book so it was very long. What Oskar did was take 30 or soon his friends and make a horror story with them. Mopeds were the big attraction besides computers and the games they played. He covers all this in a camp building by playing out people looking at the stars when something flys right at them. He narrows it down to 13 friends and then turns it into a horror story that you can believe. There's a lot of fighting with horrible monsters and if you like horror stories this may be what you need. I like the ending very much and can make recommendations for reading it.

It was a fantastic book. I was instantly obsessed with it due to the cover. It was very well written and easy to get into. I highly recommend!!!

This was a great time. I loved how the author created atmospheric tension and the story was brutal yet empathetic.

This was a strong apocalyptic horror novel, it had that feel that I was looking for. It had that suspenseful atmosphere and worked with what I was looking for in this type of book. The characters were everything that I wanted and glad I got to read this story about them. Oskar Östlund has a strong story and glad I read this.

Nice! A horror novel written with real love for the genre, wearing its influences on its sleeve, and offering a blast of a story! "The Wolf's Time" gives Stranger Things vibes unabashedly, but soon becomes its own thing, choosing to take things into a novel direction. It's a summer tale, about young friends in a Swedish small town (Skutskär), whose holidays turn into terror, as they're forced to fight for their lives! The body-count increases very fast, and the twists are totally unexpected! Admittedly, the language is a bit rough (considering Östlund's Swedish), the pacing has a few problems (especially the second part), but the author knows how to tell a story worth the readers' investment (the novel exceeds 600 pages!), not only promising a terrific tale but actually delivering a mature, terrifying narrative full also of insight on friendship and life in general. The characterization is unreal: it's like wathing a slasher, though one that allows you time and space to root for the characters! I had some reservations with the ending (too obscure for me), but in no way is this going to stop me from recommending the book to every horror lover out there!

In The Wolf's Time, we follow a group of friends in the quiet Swedish town of Skutskär as their idyllic summer quickly spirals into a terrifying battle for survival against an unknown enemy. This gripping tale seamlessly blends themes of friendship, love, and raw horror, reminiscent of classics like Stranger Things and Battle Royale. I thoroughly enjoyed how the tension built with each page, making it impossible to put down. The vivid descriptions and emotional depth really drew me in, creating a haunting atmosphere that lingered long after I finished reading.

Whoa! The Wolf's Time totally blew my mind! 🎉 Picture this: a chill summer in a cute Swedish town, and then BAM! Nightmare mode activated! The friends we meet are just like us, and I loved how they band together against something truly horrifying. It’s a wild ride of friendship, courage, and edge-of-your-seat action that kept me hooked from start to finish. If you’re into heart-pounding thrills and characters you can root for, you’ve gotta dive into this book. Trust me, you won't regret it! 📚✨