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Wolf Hollow (Wolf Hollow, #1)

Lauren Wolk

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Apr 17, 2018 Nick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction-juvenile

There is a legitimate question of whether this is juvenile or YA, partly because of how grim and dark it is, but I think that older teen readers would have a harder time with the main character. Some of the folks who have been critical of the book think that it's TOO dark for the intended audience, but it seemed okay to me, compared to other books aimed at middle school readers. The book's ending is far from tidy, but that actually feels realistic, given the things leading up to the book's clima There is a legitimate question of whether this is juvenile or YA, partly because of how grim and dark it is, but I think that older teen readers would have a harder time with the main character. Some of the folks who have been critical of the book think that it's TOO dark for the intended audience, but it seemed okay to me, compared to other books aimed at middle school readers. The book's ending is far from tidy, but that actually feels realistic, given the things leading up to the book's climax. You don't always get convenient happy endings in a story, and this one's about as messy as you get. I really wasn't expecting several of the twists.
Was the story realistic for the time period? Well, it's not a big city story. This is about people far from the main roads, in western Pennsylvania, in a rural farming community. The author's own mother lived in a similar place, and told her daughter stories about life there, so I would tend to believe that. If anything, too many stories modernize and urbanize their settings, and this reminds us that 75 years ago, not everyone had everything up to date. Electricity was still reaching some areas, as in this story.
Once I got into this story, I couldn't put it down. The main character, Annabelle, wasn't as developed as the main character sometimes is, but she was almost a witness rather than a character. She's important in the action in some scenes, though, and convincing when she takes action.
The villains of the piece, a young teen girl who is a vicious bully much of the time, and a teen boy who isn't much better, still have a soft spot for each other, and that comes out in surprising ways. At first, I thought something different had happened to her family, but the final scenes give a clearer idea.
Toby, the 40-something World War I veteran, has his secrets which only gradually come out, and some that never do, and that's okay, too. That is the kind of man he is shown to be.
I actually came out of the story wishing that the ending had been different, which meant that I was caring about the characters that much. There just wasn't a good way to get to a NICE ending, with the way the story came out. ...more

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Aug 11, 2016 Gwen Dandridge rated it it was amazing

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May 25, 2017 Betsy rated it it was amazing

Mar 31, 2018 Michele added it

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