DNF Review: For the Wolf – Hannah Whitten

I’m going to be honest with all of you. I haven’t DNF’d a book in about 8 months. It’s not because I haven’t read any that have rubbed me the wrong way or whose reading experiences were negative. It’s because, with the pandemic and my mental health taking a toll, I’ve felt pretty bad about not forcing myself to find the good in every book I read and to adapt to its pacing and not-so-fun elements.

Before the pandemic, I would DNF a book out of ten, sometimes more, without giving it a second thought. But although I’m struggling with that right now, I do tend to put some books aside, weakly thinking I’ll pick them up another time. All of that to say that me choosing to not finish FOR THE WOLF is a little hard, and even now part of me wishes to find a way to finish it because I actually have nothing against these characters.

Red is the main one, the young woman who is sent to the woods, to the wolf, in hopes of being a good enough sacrifice that the old kings, who are believed to be prisoners of the woods, will be released. It’s a pretty dark tradition and these people don’t necessarily have a reason to believe that the woods will hear their prayers. It’s pretty much blind fate and unnecessary sacrifices, since the woods have made no promises, and besides, there’s something trickier going on.

It’s a perfectly intriguing premise, one that certainly drew me in. The problem with this book lies in the fact that the idea is better than the execution. It is quite unfortunate when that happens, because I can feel the potential of this story in every page, and yet it never truly morphs into the greatness that I know it can be. In other words, I think Red is a strong heroine, and if I was into the writing, I would have been quite excited about her and Wolf’s evolving relationship and somewhat curious about her sister’s plan to do something about Red’s disappearance. But the writing is not very enjoyable. It is thick. There is too much description for its own good. Not even very good one… There is too much emphasis on description of action and the world around, and too little on emotion and connection between people. Little to no lyricism. Because of that, I would not mind being summarized this story/book instead of reading it myself from start to finish, whereas I would NEVER want anyone to summarize and spoil, say, HURRICANE SUMMER which I’m also currently reading. (I was going to say HARRY POTTER or THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, but that would not have been very fair.)

So I regret that I don’t have enough patience? interest? dopamine? inside of me to get through this one. I don’t recommend it, unless you’re a die-hard fantasy lover or you are not turned off by anything I mentioned above.

Thank you Hachette Book Group Canada for the copy in exchange for an honest review!