Beth O’Brien, HarperCollins, (320p) ISBN: 9780008642013. Middle Grade, read 05/04/25, eBook ★★★★★

Wolf Siren

I was immediately drawn to this by the cover designed and drawn by Ayesha L. Rubio, I’ve always been a sucker for Red Riding Hood tales and I love seeing how people handle them.

This is Beth O’Brien’s debut, and what a debut it is, confident and strong, full of beautiful magic, wolves, and reasons why the patriarchy sucks.

Red lives in a village surrounded by a forest, one no one really goes in any longer as the wolves have turned from the hunted to the hunters and any man or boy who goes in the woods is killed.

Though women and girls are left unharmed they aren’t allowed to go in the woods either, this is done to control by the men who resent their freedoms and want to curtail them as much as possible.

I really don’t want to give too much of the story away as the twists and turns are wonderful as they unfold, there are secrets all around, jealousies, entrenched power, magic, wolves, and lots of changes. This keeps you powering through as you are desperate for the next revelation.

But the woods are full of magic, trees that can help or hinder, wolves with secrets, women who’ve been exiled for their craft, and a story that needs to be told to balance out the narrative told by the men in the village.

This is one of the best books I’ve read that talks normally about menstruation in girls and this is a key part of the storyline, this change in a woman’s body is used really well in the story, again not going to give why away…

The main character being visually impaired was done so sympathetically and honestly and the acceptance of this by others around her was really strong, there was also a moment of signing in the book which was just part of the story which really worked for me.

Altogether this was one of the strongest middle grade debut’s I’ve read for a while and now I really want to read what comes next from Beth O’Brien

I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.