Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

I LOVED THIS STORY!  A mesmerizing, twist-and-turn of a page-turner that enchants, disturbs, horrifies, frightens, and makes you want to go out in the wild to hang with wolves and Inti Flynn, the extraordinary protagonist who feels in a way she cannot explain and no one can begin to comprehend. With Once There Were Wolves, author Charlotte McConaghy delivers a tale that is as near-perfect an example of storytelling as I have ever been fortunate enough to read.

Set in the Scottish Highlands (one of my favorite places on the planet), this tale is about far more than wolves and what it takes to bring them back to a location where they have long been extinct. It is about a person’s capacity for love no matter how much damage to the heart one has sustained. It is about the healing of broken souls and it is about the evil humans are capable of when they are afraid or so enmeshed in superstition that they are ignorant of the truth.

“When we were eight, Dad cut me open from throat to stomach.” From this very first incredible line, I was one hundred percent in. The descriptions of the wild, mostly unpopulated Highlands are Inti’s, looking out at this world from her eyes as she tracks her beloved wolves and tries to follow the clues of a murder at the same time. I was not able to come close to figuring out who the killer was. The writing style was outstanding. The development of her cast of her characters is spot on. This book will haunt you long after you reach the end and put it down. This has been my favorite read so far in 2022. I highly recommend!