Monday, June 28, 2010

Raised by Wolves




Title: Raised by Wolves

Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Genre: YA/Paranormal.

Publisher: Edgmont, USA.

Release Date: 2010.

Source: Received at Book Expo America.

Favorite character: Bryn and Lake.

Favorite quote: “Triumph was sweet. The aftertaste bitter.”

All in all: A good story. I liked it. Good ending.

What I liked: The cover! I was very drawn to the image and the beautiful moonlit shades.  Very appropriate for this novel. I enjoyed Bryn and her voice. I liked the way the story was told and I liked her willfulness and independence. She was also fun! She could be a smart alec and still be (mostly) respectful and yet still tried to get around the rules. I thought it was cute when she was contemplating things she would count out her theories. I thought the plot was clever and the author’s concept of pack dynamics and the importance of the pack was shown well. The fact that Bryn was an outsider within this “family” created tension and drama, something many people can relate to. The book had slow parts and fast parts but I thought the fast parts were engaging and exciting. I loved the way the reader sees Bryn mature in the course of the story, how she comes to certain conclusions, how she empowers herself and at the same time shows great empathy to others. In fact she practically gains her strength because of her empathy. I also really liked the last few chapters. It held a few twists that surprised me.

The book has very little “container”, which is interesting to me. (If only for the fact that in all my writing classes container/setting is empashized). The story is mainly action and Bryns’ thoughts. The setting are described very simply; Bryn ran to Callum’s house, in the classroom, etc. On one hand it cuts right to the action and what Bryn is going through and also allows the reader to imagine the settings. This is not something I liked nor disliked, just something I noticed. However, sometimes I had to re-read to figure out what was going on.

What I liked less: Although most of the writing was lovely, sometimes it was a bit confusing and I had to go back and read a sentence or phrase more than once. I also would have liked Chase to be more developed. For such an important character, he almost seemed like a ghost. I know that we are viewing the story through Bryn’s narration, and we know that she is drawn to him because they had similar experiences, but I guess I needed more of these thoughts in her head to justify her actions and feelings. There were also a couple of parts of the book that I had a hard time accepting. *SPOILER ALERT: The two that come to mind were when Bryn could communicate with her friends through their thoughts (although this did make more sense toward the end) and also when Lake gave her the silver knife retractable wrist cuffs. That just didn’t ring true to me. END SPOILER ALERT*

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

2 comments:

Christine said...

Great review!
I have this one on my wishlist, but at the moment there are so many other great books coming out that I didn´t have time to read it yet.
By the way, thank you so much for grabbing an posting my button! <3

Midnyte Reader said...

Thanks Christine! I know what you mean about so many books on the TBR pile! I love your blog too!

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