If you are looking for something charming by TJ Klune but a little spicier, the Greencreek series is for you. Wolfsong is a little bit Twilight, a little bit romance, and a lot about the importance of family even if they aren't related by blood.

The story follows Ox, a young man who's faced adversity and rejection throughout his life, including from his father. But everything changes when the Bennett family, who happen to be shapeshifters with the ability to transform into wolves, moves in next door. This family brings magic, loyalty, and enduring friendships into Ox's life, creating a stark contrast with the quiet existence he's always known.

The relationship that develops between Ox and Joe, the youngest Bennett boy, is beautifully portrayed. The bond between them deepens over the years, and as the story unfolds, we see the complexities of love, loyalty, and betrayal in all their glory. The emotional journey these characters go through is so well-crafted, and it keeps you turning the pages.

As the story takes unexpected turns, including the tragic event that tears the pack apart and Joe's subsequent departure, you can't help but be drawn into the rollercoaster of emotions and the hauntingly beautiful "song" that binds Ox and Joe together.

The return of Joe as a man after three years creates a powerful and tension-filled atmosphere that leaves you on the edge of your seat. The chemistry between Ox and Joe is palpable, and the connection between them is so intense that you can't help but root for their love to triumph.

I requested an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fun read! Not perfect, but fun.

We follow Ox and his relationship with the Bennet family. As a 16 year old, Ox is chosen by his neighbour Joe Bennet. Ox learns that the Bennets are a powerful werewolf family and also that Joe choosing him and "giving him his wolf" is kinda like Jacob from Twilight imprinting on the baby. Joe decides that Ox is his furever mate as a child.

There is some pretty detailed sex between Joe and Ox once Joe is legally an adult (there is a bit of an age gap between them by the time they decide to mate). Detailed to the point of being kinda yucky. Like, testicles are weird and wrinkly looking, yes. Having that described... was a time. Me repeating it here for you now... you're welcome.

Overall, this felt very reminiscent of Twilight. Ox is a bland Bella-esque character that falls in with a found family of really interesting supernatural people. As a person who grew up with Twilight, this felt somewhat nostalgic for me. It's what Twilight should have been -- gay and spicy.

After reading and loving “The House in the Cerulean Sea”, I knew I had to read more books by TJ Klune. I enjoy Klune's writing and the characters he develops, so I went into this with that mindset. Klune has a way of crafting characters and taking you along on a journey with them, that I love. I enjoyed the found family aspects of this. It was so wholesome to read.

Although, Klune's writing is easy to read, but this started to really drag for me. There was so much repetition that could've been cut out. At one point I was thinking about DNFing it because it started to become tedious to read. From what I've read Klune has this way of writing where he likes to repeat important lines, similar to poetry, but it was just too much.

The other thing that bothered me was the relationship between Ox and Joe. I get the whole werewolf thing, but "mating" at 10 is crazy. Ox is 6 years older than Joe. Their romantic relationship started when Joe was 16/17 and Ox was 22/23. It made me feel uncomfortable at times. There's also a rather explicit sex scene between them that took me off guard. The good thing is they were both adults, however I was not expecting that much detail. With that said, this is NOT a YA book. The cover can be misleading.

Overall, this was a nice small town paranormal romance full of all the found family vibes I love. I look forward to picking up more books by this author.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy!

Unfortunately, this was not for me. I was unable to get into the story and did not finish it. I encourage others to give it a try for themselves!

Wolfsong follows Ox, a young boy who always told people would never understand him and that he would take shit from anyone. When Ox is 16, he meets a boy. A boy who talks and talks and talks and talks. He meets a family. A family that understands him.

I went in to Wolfsong expecting absolutely nothing. I’m not big on werewolves in a horror story, I had zero interest in werewolf love stories. The alpha and beta jokes I’ve seen over the years did nothing to convince me this was my type of book. The only reason I was willing to even consider reading this is how stupidly much I’ve loved all of TJ Klune’s books, and I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn’t fail me now.

He did it. TJ Klune made me enjoy weird werewolf love story. There were some questionable parts that I didn’t enjoy. The mate thing with an age gap came across a little awkward, even without being overly concerning for the timelines of when things happened. I’m not huge on sex in stories, I kind of skim it until it’s done, and it was pretty graphic - but that’s a personal thing, and I don’t think there was anything wrong with it and others will probably like it, if that’s their thing.

Despite the few things I didn’t love, the rest of it was beautiful. You can tell this is an earlier book by Klune, and that it lacks a bit of his later humour, his smoother writing style, but it still is evidently his book. The emotional gut punches are all present and accounted for. The fact that his love story extended beyond two people, and encompassed the love of family, especially found family. Ox and his mother Maggie, and their interactions with the Bennet’s was perfect. I loved watching all the characters grow and create this huge family, pack thing.

Anyways, the point being, if you’ve been ignoring this book because you also aren’t into what feels like it could be werewolf fanfic - give it a shot. If you’ve loved Klune’s other books, you’re going to find a lot of enjoyment in this as well. If you’ve not read his work, but are a fan of romance fantasy or found family, this is definitely a book to add to your list.

From the publisher:
The Bennett family has a secret:
They're not just a family, they're a pack.
Wolfsong is Ox Matheson's story.

Oxnard Matheson was twelve when his father taught him a lesson: Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then his father left.

Ox was sixteen when the energetic Bennett family moved in next door, harboring a secret that would change him forever. The Bennetts are shapeshifters. They can transform into wolves at will. Drawn to their magic, loyalty, and enduring friendships, Ox feels a gulf between this extraordinary new world and the quiet life he’s known, but he finds an ally in Joe, the youngest Bennett boy.

Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his heart. Violence flared, tragedy split the pack, and Joe left town, leaving Ox behind. Three years later, the boy is back. Except now he’s a man – charming, handsome, but haunted – and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

The beloved fantasy romance sensation by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about love, loyalty, betrayal, and family.

The Green Creek Series is for adult readers.

Now available from Tor Books.

My thoughts:

I gave this book 4 stars. I enjoyed reading about Ox and the Bennett pack.

It's not a stretch at all to say Ox was my favorite character. I loved his quiet strength and the fact that he is smarter than many people assume he is.I did enjoy other characters as well, but none as much as Ox. As things turn out, he is an exceptional man. I enjoyed watching him grow and change throughout the book.

The world building was well done. Green Creek becomes a hometown not just a place for action to occur. Also the author did a good job at hinting and showng that there is something special about the area.

I found the four classes of werewolf interesting. There are of course Alphas and Betas and pack members. It's the fourth class of the Omegas - the ones lost to their wolves- that is different. They've lost control of themselves and seek out powerful wolves in an attempt to join their packs and heal. But it doesn't seem like there is any coming back from becoming an Omega.

I had two little nitpicking things that bothered me. One was that a lot happened to the Bennett pack and Ox. Sometimes I found this stressful to read and a little depressing. At those points I found it hard to go on and almost DNF'd the book. The second was that when the sex scene occurs it is rather graphic and I am more of a fade to black kind of person. I get why the author went with it the way he did, but it just wasn't for me.

Overall, it is a good book. It's worth a read. I would suggest this book to adult readers who enjoy werewolf stories with a sort of complicated romance.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. This did not influence my opinion of the book.

The Bennett family has a secret:
They're not just a family, they're a pack.
Wolfsong is Ox Matheson's story.

What a wonderfully written book. I was just in awe the entire time I was reading. I tried to describe the book to a friend and I couldn't do it justice. This is just a fantastic story of a found family and a love story that exceeds time. I absolutely loved all of the characters and the story just kept you involved the entire time. Another great TJ Klune novel.

Thank you to @netgalley and @tordotcompub for allowing me to review this book.

Thank you to Tor Books for my review copy!

I absolutely could not put this book down. I love all the characters and they deserve only good things after all of this.

Some things I loved about this one:
💖 Found family - top tier
💖 Every family should react to their children coming out the way they do in this book. All love.
💖 Confronting toxic masculinity.

This book spans like - 10? 13 years? I am usually allergic to time jumps in books and will put the book down for a month in between, but Klune writes the passage of time so well that I never felt that jarring moment I usually do during jumps. I also didn’t feel like the timeline ever dragged where we were just waiting for a year to pass before the next thing happened.

At some point, you are going to realize who the romance is between and you’re going to be concerned. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

It usually takes me a week to read a fantasy book, even a romantasy book, and I devoured this in about 24 hours. I apologize to my friends who wanted to hear about my feelings, I could not take breaks for talking I needed to know what was going to happen next.

(Wolfsong is, I think, the first werewolf romance I’ve read since Twilight, so just know that I am not super familiar with the genre…)

TJ Klune writes some great books, but this one did not appeal to me. It was way too long & problematic on a lot of fronts. It’ll be a pass on the others in this series. Beautiful cover art though.

An absolutely beautiful tale of growth, acceptance, found family, and love.

TJ Klune's writing is absolutely spectacular and the flow and tone of the book matched Ox perfectly. I loved following Ox as he met and grew with the Bennetts. From his young years to his more rugged adult ones, Ox was a joy to know. His relationships with each Bennett, with each friend from Gordo's, his mom, and his peers were all so well thought-out and paced. The world Klune has built here is magical (and not just. because of the werewolves).

Wolfsong is a beautiful blend of tender moments, action, romance, humor, and just a touch of spice. It has become one of my top reads of 2023! This series has me in a chokehold and I can't wait to dive into Ravensong!

I was very curious about this book. I really enjoyed the Extraordinaries trilogy by TJ Klune (although his strong pro- and anti- police stands in different oils gave me whiplash), but I didn’t really vibe with Under the Whispering Door. I enjoyed the sentiments of House on a Cerulean Sea but felt the world building was weak in a way that took me out of the book. I was full of anticipation when NetGalley and Tor gave me an eARC of Wolfsong, a reprint (revision?) of the first book of Klune’s Green Creek series.

Going in, I thought it was going to be more urban fantasy than paranormal romance. I was wrong. It was totally a paranormal romance, which was interesting because I don’t usually read in that sub genre. The world building was ok, if vague. But it kept such a tight focus on this small town and small cast of characters that it was alright that the world building was fuzzy around the edges.

I really enjoyed the voice and character of Ox, the protagonist. He felt very real and his emotions rang true. Most of the other characters felt flat, and I have fundamental qualms about the romance since the couple met when one was a teenager an the other was ten. Even though nothing physical occurred until the younger one was 17, this still felt emotionally icky to me.

And it was soooooo loooooong! There’s like a novella’s worth of story here and the book is like 500+ pages. It’s too much. I enjoyed it but there were times when it felt like a slog.

But I’m just curious enough to try the next one.

I don't think I've read such a slow burn with an age difference and a similar length of pining between two men since the incredibly memorable Over and Over Again. For all of those similarities, however, this is a completely different book.

It's a book about werewolves, for starters. And the age difference, though it seems large when the love interest is 10 when he's first introduced, is only six years.

Ox is a kid whose father thinks he's dumb before he ends up leaving him and his mum behind. The mortgage payments start piling up. He thinks he's going to lose the house even though he's meant to be the man of it now.

I reckon I fell in love with our main character Ox and the big brother/boss figure Gordo before he even had a love interest walk into his life. He's so earnest, and barely even speaks. On the few occasions when he does let out a bunch of words, the response is always that it's strange because the person in front of him have never heard him string so many words together in a row.

Then he meets Joe at the end of the lane both their houses occupy. His house has been vacant for years and the family have only just returned. Joe talks enough for both of them, a babbling brook of childish excitement that Ox is more than happy to be brought into.

Just as happy as he is to be brought into a family that is much larger than just he and his mum. Actually, the two of these families eventually ending up turning into one was one of my favourite things about this book.

The slow burn... honestly, it could have gone on forever and I wouldn't have minded. I was HERE for it. Here for the fact that Joe obviously had what looked a lot like a crush, and Ox was just oblivious as he first dated a girl from school, Jessie, and then ended up having his first experiences with men he was also attracted to.

All the while, the family and best friend bonds were the backbone of the story.

Until Joe leaves. Maybe this is expected in such a long book. It couldn't, after all, have been a slow burn that actually went forever, despite my highest hopes. But, again, Ox was a strong enough and loveable enough character on his own that even without Joe bounding around next to him, this novel and the things he needed to do to keep his home and his people safe were compelling.

Thank god there are other books in this series, is all I can say. I immediately dove into Ravensong after finishing this.

TJ Klune has a way of writing that just gets to your heart and Wolfsong is no exception. I really enjoyed this and I really enjoyed getting to know the characters. I'm very excited to see where the rest of this series goes!

This book has me back in love with TJ Klune! The characters hit just right and I can't wait to continue with this story in book 2.

I finished TJ Klune’s Wolfsong a month ago and have been struggling with how to review it. I think I needed some time to process, to recover from this novel, and space to think about how Klune used themes that I found personally problematic.

Let me get the whole “personally problematic” thing addressed first. I did struggle with several aspects of this novel, including the age gap between Joe and Ox, Joe's possessive urges, and the sheer violence of the packs facing the Omegas. As I read, I had to keep reminding myself that most of these characters were not human. Again and again, I had to reevaluate how far I was willing to suspend my disbelief and stay immersed in this novel's fictional landscape.

Turns out, I was willing to suspend disbelief indefinitely and stay with Wolfsong until the end. (I mean this second thing in an I-can't-stop-reading-how-is-it-already-three-a.m. kind of way. Because, yeah, I tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour but found myself unable to stop thinking about the book. Since I couldn’t sleep anyway, what with all the obsessing over Ox and Joe, I picked Wolfsong back up, reading clear through until the book was finished and it was nearly time to get up and get ready for work.) This was possible for two very simple reasons: (1) by the time the age gap seriously came into play, it was essentially moot, and (2) it was always very clear that the possessive thing was tied to being a wolf shifter. As for the overall violence? Well, it is a werewolf novel, so...

To avoid writing a too-long review, I’ll keep my gushing about the book as short as possible. In a single sentence: I loved the characters. The main and secondary characters were all so perfectly flawed. The MC’s backstories were powerful—traumatic without being more than I could take—and their development throughout the novel was complex and ultimately astounding. Particularly when it comes to Ox, we really got to grow up with him. And I loved how Klune used different writing styles to differentiate between Ox’s youth and maturity—and yet another to indicate internal pack communication. (I’ll admit here that the prose style at the beginning of the book seemed sort of choppy and immature, and I wasn’t sure at first that I was going to be able to stick with the book. Once I realized that it was intentional, illustrative, and episodic, I was so glad I’d stayed.)

My final word: considering (1) my inability to use a dang bookmark with this novel, (2) my emotional response (I didn’t get into it here, but I cried—wept—through the last 30%, which is not a normal part of my reading experience), and (3) how strongly this book has stayed with me for the past month, five stars is the only fair rating I can give.

This chronicles Ox's journey to becoming part of the Bennett pack over 11 years. It starts very slow, when Ox is a teenager and Joe Bennett is a child. The book makes fun of itself referencing twilight and imprinting, but I found it a little weird that the connection between Ox and Joe, even if it wasn't romantic yet, started so young. Once I got to about the 40% point of the book, and seven years in story, everything really picked up and it was an enjoyable paranormal story.

Definitely not a YA book, but I really enjoyed this one. I'd heard a lot of good things, so I'm glad this is getting a reprint.

Ox is a young man living in a small Oregon town (shout out Oregon!). One day new neighbors arrive and their young son, Joe, is immediately attached to Ox. The Bennetts take Ox in and eventually take in his mom as well and they become like part of their family. Ox eventually learns that the family are werewolves. The story spans over 10 years and as Ox and the family get older there is a love connection, a werewolf feud, a friend that turns out to be a witch, a new alpha (or 2) and a lot of trauma and drama.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book other than it had to do with werewolves. I really enjoyed the story as a whole. There were a few parts that made me feel uneasy or were difficult to read (TW: child abuse, mention of sexual assault of a minor as a hypothetical). That one moment rubbed me the wrong way but it did paint the villain as a major villain. It was also a little hard for me to wrap my head around the relationship between Ox and Joe at first. I liked their relationship and how it grew over time and how they cared for each other but it was still hard to think that Joe knew Ox was his since he was 7 (but then again, when reading about werewolves and magical creatures I suppose it is best to suspend reality a bit). Overall I enjoyed this story and the way that it was written and I was left wanting to read the next book in the series.

TJ Klune always always hits the nail on the head for me. The characters are so full. The story has so much heart. Did I mention there are queer werewolves? If that's not enough to sell you on this book I don't know what is. I don't want to say too much because I think its best if you go in not knowing what to expect but do yourself a favor and read this book!

TJ Klune is such a cool writer. I appreciate the chance to read any of his books, because each of his series is completely different. And yet they all draw you in! I had seen this series when it was self published/ just on Amazon, and I’m so glad they’re getting re done for a larger audience. I also LOVE the cover, it looks so good!!