Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025--San Antonio

Wolfsong by TJ Klune was named as a top book of 2025 by TPR.  It's a young adult novel.  Many young adult novels are good enough to be popular with adults.  Unfortunately for me, I found this one to be maybe well written only for someone in the 12-15 year-old range.  I observed problems with the story that I think most adults would also notice.  Ox makes too fast of a change from a meek boy to has trouble saying what is appropriate at any given time and who is bullied.  He also has low self-esteem.  But within months all of this is changing rapidly.  Throughout most of the book he has no problem thinking in sophisticated manner.  And he seldom seems to have problems talking, yet he keeps saying he does.  There's also a bit of a cringe element through most of the story due to him being 6 years older than the young 10-year-old boy with whom he is developing a relationship.  It is an exciting story concept though--that there are werewolves and witches living among us and working together in packs with an Alfa as their leader without our even being aware of them and that these packs are organized with a top Alfa leader over them all.  In this story, a werewolf has gone rogue creating problems in his effort to forcefully become an Alfa of a pack.  With the story's weaknesses combined with its exciting concept, I settled on a rating of 3 1/2 stars out of 5.