I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten Series: Wilderwood #1
Published by Orbit on June 1 2021
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Pages: 448
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Lush, beautiful writing couldn’t quite make up for a lack of consistent pacing, so unfortunately this book didn’t quite work for me.
I’m sad to say I really struggled with this book, although there were elements I really enjoyed, so in the end, this was a mixed bag for me. For the Wolf has a strong Beauty and the Beast sensibility, and Whitten has captured the magical fairytale feel perfectly, but I had some issues with pacing and the plot, which I’ll go into below.
Redaris is a second daughter, which means that she must offer herself to the Wolf, a mysterious figure who lives deep in the Wilderwood and takes sacrifices from the village every hundred years. As the story goes, eventually these sacrifices will result in the Wolf agreeing to return the lost Five Kings to the people of Valleyda. On the eve of Red’s twentieth birthday, the day she’s expected to say goodbye to her family and friends, her sister Neve—who is a first daughter and will become Queen someday—desperately tries to convince her to run away instead. But Red is determined to fulfill her destiny. She knows in her heart that she’s a danger to her loved ones, after an incident in the Wilderwood five years ago resulted in the deaths of innocent people, deaths that Red believes she was responsible for.
But when she makes it through the dangerous woods to the Wolf’s mansion, Red is surprised to find that the Wolf is merely a man named Eammon, and the story of the Five Kings is just a myth. Eammon and his friends Fife and Lyra sacrifice their blood daily to keep the Shadowlands at bay, an evil, dark presence that threatens the magic of the Wilderwood. But what is Red’s role in all this? She feels a connection to the woods that can’t be denied, and she wants to atone for her past mistakes. When she and Eammon join forces against the darkness, Red senses that they may have a fighting chance. But an even darker force back home could unravel everything…
One of the best things about this book is the strong fairytale vibe and Hannah Whitten’s writing, which aside from a couple of missteps, adds a wonderful feeling of magic and danger to her tale. I loved her lush descriptions of the Wilderwood, especially the sentinels, the birch trees on the cover which can move on their own and act as guards against the Shadowlands. I also loved Black Keep, the mansion where Eammon, Fife and Lyra live, which reminded me a lot of the Beast’s castle in Beauty and the Beast. The Wilderwood is continually trying to get in, and I loved the creepy descriptions of the vines and branches that break through and try to take over the house. And in true Beauty and the Beast fashion, there is a library full of old books which becomes a place of solace for Red, who loves to read.
In alternating chapters, we get to see the story from Neve’s perspective as well. Neve is missing her sister terribly and wants to rescue her, and so she makes some bad choices and teams up with a Priestess named Kiri. I quite liked Neve, although I would have liked to see more interactions between the two sisters.
The romantic elements are not the main focus, which I liked. Red and Eammon have a rather slow burn romance that takes a backseat to the dangers of the Wilderwood, and although at times their relationship gets a little angsty, I actually enjoyed it. Eammon fit the gruff, standoffish beast archetype perfectly, as his frosty veneer slowly melts over time. There are a couple of side stories involving two boys from the village, Raffe and Arick. Arick is fated to marry Neve, even though he’s in love with Red, so there’s a bit of romantic drama thrown in.
As for negatives, I would have to say the pacing was the biggest issue for me. After a promising opening, the plot went nowhere fast, and by that I mean that for a good chunk of the middle section, Whitten’s story went around and around in circles and was extremely repetitive. Once Red and Eammon start working together to keep the Shadowlands at bay, there is an endless parade of going to the Wilderwood, spotting trouble of one sort or another (missing Sentinels, black pits of badness, dying trees, etc), and bleeding on those bad things in order to restore the Wilderwood. This happens over and over with very little change, and I literally felt trapped by the middle section because of this repetition.
And while I loved the descriptions of the Wilderwood for the most part, I did get a little tired of hearing about Red’s connection with it, the roots running through her veins, hers and Eammon’s blood tinged with green (I wish I had counted the number of times this description is used), the way the vines gravitate toward Red and try to enter her. At times it felt as though the author was so caught up in her prose that she didn’t realize how repetitive it all was. All of this repetition gave the story a claustrophobic feel, and although that might have been what she was going for, it just made me want to put the book down.
And speaking of blood, the characters carry knives and they are continually cutting themselves to save the forest. They also draw blood and store it in vials and carry those around with them in case of a bloodletting emergency. You all know I’m not afraid of blood in my stories, but the way blood is used here didn’t sit well with me. I was reminded a little of another book I didn’t like very much, Wicked Saints, whose characters cut themselves a lot and ran around with blood stained clothing. Ugh. I get that this was supposed to be an “edgy” element that gave the story a darker tone, but it went too far over the “yuck” line for me personally, and it was especially annoying when the characters realize just how stupid they’re being—practically bleeding themselves dry in order to save the Wilderwood—but they keep on doing it anyway.
I do want to mention something nitpicky that pulled me out of the story, and that was the jarring way the characters would suddenly blurt out swear words. Again, I have no trouble with swearing at all, but I’m a firm believer of characters swearing when it makes sense for the story. This is a second world fantasy, and for Red to suddenly call Eammon an “asshole” just didn’t fit in. There were a couple of “fuck yous” too that were super out of place, and I just couldn’t figure out why the author thought she needed to include them.
The story finally picks up the pace at the end, and there’s a lead in to the next book in the series. I have to admit I’m curious to see what happens next, and perhaps some of the issues I had with this book will be worked out by then.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
Too bad about the sagging middle. Sounds like For the Wolf was almost really good.
Priscilla Bettis recently posted…One-Sentence Reviews: My 2nd Quarter 2021 Reads
It had its moments, and her writing and imagery were lovely.
Agreed with everything in here. I had a couple of really jarring moments with the writing that made me stop completely in my tracks – on the whole the writing was very good but those few instances just really irritated me.
I also didn’t like the constant blood letting – it felt like there was a lack of magic and so that was the best that the author could come up with and there was just too much of it.
The romance was a nice slow build but there was a lot of behaviour that seemed to be thrown in simply to create drama.
Shame about this one I had very high hopes.
Lynn 😀
I guess it was blood magic, but I feel like that’s so overdone these days. Plus every time they ran a knife across their palms, it just made me wince, lol.
Pacing tends to be my biggest issue with a book — but there clearly is enough goodness here to keep you going to the next one.
Yes, I am curious about what happens next, so we shall see:-)
You’re not the first to comment about the uneven pacing for this book, and the constant repetitions you mentioned might make for an unpleasant “Groundhog Day” feeling, indeed, which coupled with all that blood-letting (ewwwww….) makes me thing twice before tackling this one… Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Maddalena@spaceandsorcery recently posted…CATALYST GATE (The Protectorate #3), by Megan O’Keefe
It did have that Groundhog Day feel at times!
Hey three stars isn’t too bad. I just started reading For the Wolf yesterday. So far I’m enjoying it but I’m not far in yet so I’m curious to see if my opinions will be similiar to yours in the end.
Stephanie @ Bookfever recently posted…Mid-Year Freak Out Book Tag 2021
I’m really curious to see what you think!
I’ve seen quite a few similar reviews about this book, so I guess it’s safe to say you’re not the only one feeling this way about this book! Initially I was intrigued by this story’s premise, but I’m not sure if I’ll pick this up anymore.
I have seen some glowing reviews, so I would say you just never know! But it was a bit disappointing.
Hmm. I didn’t get past 20%, and based on your review, I don’t think I’ll go back to it. Even having read that far, I felt like nothing much was happening and there was a lot of repetitive description. Too bad.
Exactly! Nothing happened!
Repetitive descriptions and sometimes descriptive writing that sounded nice until you interrogated it a little and it just… made no sense. Like “the only time their eyes weren’t on each other was when the other was looking” (about Neve and Raffe), or “she closed her eyes against early summer sun, the light illuminating veins and capillaries making her vision look veiled in blood” or the time she described an inverted forest with its trees growing upside down (we know what inverted means, and if we didn’t, you described it in the previous sentence with the description of roots extending to the sky – besides, if you have an inverted forest that is grown upside down, doesn’t that make it a regular forest? Redundancies can be dangerous!) Or nearly a dozen descriptions of lips moving between teeth (what ever happened to a simple ‘she bit her lip’? ) Or slightly illogical descriptions of varied other gestures. I felt that the descriptive writing was 75% lovely and 25% what the heck did you just write…
Yes, I agree! I think some of it is just being a debut writer or the book not being edited well.
The cover is adorable and I was hoping the tale would be worthwhile. It sounds like it needs some structural work but has good bones. Thanks for the honest review, 🙂
I love the cover too! Lots of readers love this, so it’s probably just a matter of taste.
That feeling of just wanting to put a book down often says a lot, just as it does for those you keeping wanting to pick up and not put down. Too bad this one was in the former camp. I hope the next one does, indeed, have less of the issues you found in this one.
Sometimes it’s my mood that makes me put down a book, but when I groan every time I think about reading it, it’s not a good sign…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am uncertain about this one. It has some things in common with some parts of Uprooted too, which I loved. I guess I’ll wait and see if you read the next one.
Anne – Books of My Heart recently posted… Unfinished Business by JA Jance
I loved Uprooted, and even though you can make comparisons between the two, this wasn’t nearly as good.
I have this on hold with my library and while I will still give it a try, I will now lower my expectations a bit. The cursing does sound a tad disturbing even though Mr. Barb will tell you I sometimes have the mouth of a sailor. It just doesn’t seem to jive with the fairy tale essence it is trying to give off. Oh well, at least I’m glad I didn’t buy a copy!
I have the mouth of a sailor too sometimes, lol. But it just felt completely out of character in this story.
Especially since it comes in quite late in the story and there is no real precedent for it.
That’s a shame about the pacing because it sounds like the story had the potential to be pretty great otherwise. The cover confuses me though. I was expecting Red Riding Hood not Beauty and the Beast, lol.
Exactly! And the red cloak is actually an important element in the story. Lots of Beauty and the Beast moments, so it was a mash up I guess:-)
Relieved to see I wasn’t the only one who struggled with this. The pacing was too slow for me too, and Red was just…not bright. LOL.
LOL yeah I didn’t go into the characters much in my review, but Red made lots of questionable decisions…
Well Tammy I am still listening to it but I have the exact same issue as you! The pace is slow and yes it’s repetitive and does not seem to go anywhere. I get a claustrophobic feelin. Like being undre a snow globe and repeating the same actions all the time. I am dragging my feet here…
Yes, claustrophobic! That’s how it made me feel, also trapped…
I agree with just about everything you’ve said here! The writing was beautiful, but there were so many other things that sort of interrupted that. The pacing was definitely a huge issue, but I am somewhat curious to see what direction the story will take. Sorry you didn’t enjoy this one a bit more!
I’m sorry to see that you didn’t enjoy the book as much as I did, but I definitely understand your feelings on pacing. I didn’t have an issue with it because I was invested in the world & characters themselves, so I didn’t mind the like… day-to-day aspect of Eammon and Red dealing with the Sentinels, etc. The cutting, though, I definitely get as it is A LOT. Great and balanced review, Tammy!
Kal @ Reader Voracious recently posted…Review: For the Wolf (Wilderwood #1) by Hannah Whitten
I just picked up this book, was a Christmas gift, and it was the hardest to chew read I’ve ever had. I was way more interested in Neve’s story than Red’s, as Red’s felt as if nothing new was happening. It felt as if there was no true character development after she entered the Wilderwood, like it wasn’t a life changing event. I agree with pacing, I felt I was with the characters, running in circles until closer to the end. I would’ve loved to see more of the romance, just a tad. I’ve read my fair share of romance, slow and fast, and our Eammon/Red pairing lacked what every relationship starts with, the discovering of another. As they paired it felt very sudden. She doesn’t know this man and immediately getting married after having little contact or conversation with another was jarring. There was a necessity to their relationship that I think would’ve caused more tension than adoration for either party so the pairing just didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t feel natural and very rushed, even within the story’s own timeline.
I LOVED the beginning and end of the book, it was paced exceptionally and described wonderfully, it’s just that middle portion that felt…. blah. I was tempted to pick up the second one on a trip to the bookstore because I really loved Neve’s storyline but, I remembered I didn’t want to put myself through that again. The pacing, the ‘romance’, and the descriptions were so hard to get through. Personal