This is a story that is long overdue to be told. Although it is fictional, it brings to our attention the lives of women who strived and fought for survival in Pompeii. Women which due to no fault of their own were bought and sold as if they mere commodities and some were even stolen. As mentioned, this is a fictional tale, but one which is probably not far from the truth.
Amara was sold by her mother. She is the daughter of a well-regarded Greek doctor; however, the fate of the family takes a turn for the worse when her father dies leaving her mother and herself destitute. Amara’s fate is not in her control and she soon ends up in Pompeii under new ownership and forced to work in the wolf-den, Pompeii’s infamous brothel. However, this isn’t a story about sex, this is a story about survival and companionship as Amara is determined to find her way out and become a freedwoman. She is resilient, resourceful and intelligent and she will do all that she can to turn her life around and take back control.

I was taken by surprise by this book as it had me acknowledge my lack of knowledge on Pompeii resulting in me looking up information on the Lupanar brothel discovered in Pompeii. The language used isn’t for the prudish but is most likely authentic as I don’t think Romans were known for their manners, and English is mostly derived from Latin.

This is a remarkable, eye-opening novel that captivated me from the start and I am most definitely looking forward to book two in this trilogy.

A slow paced meticulously crafted tale of an ancient Roman brothel In Pompei. From born slaves to daughters being sold off, each “she-wolf” has a story to tell and what stories they are! Each page immerses you in the streets and markets of Pompei from dive bars and seedy corners to opulent villas and extravagant parties. A delightful read which is as mesmerising as its characters.

(As you may expect from the subject matter of this book, I am highlighting trigger warnings of rape, sexual abuse, violence, slavery and suicide.)

“May I know love’s power, if never its sweetness.”

The Wolf Den is a magnifying glass into the world of Pompeii’s prostitutes: forgotten women who are owned and controlled by both men and society. This no-holds-barred novel follows Amara, a beautiful and educated doctor’s daughter who was enslaved after the death of her father and now is a she-wolf, a prostitute in Pompeii’s largest brothel, The Wolf Den.

Elodie Harper’s novel is told entirely from Amara’s perspective. This gives our main character a rare sense of power, the power to provide names to these previously nameless women and to make the reader care for these women, becoming entirely invested in their story. Alongside Amara; Dido, Victoria, Cressa, Beronice and Britannica experience violence, desperation, pain and loss but also highlight the power of friendship. This is not an easy read at all but Harper’s characters are so captivating it was impossible to put this book down.

Amara herself is such a complex character: she has an overwhelming amount of inner strength as she accepts her fate as a slave. At times this is heart-breaking when you gain glimpses of her previous life but accepting her fate does not mean Amara ever stops striving for freedom. She may have to change her idea of what happily ever after consists of but Amara will never stop working towards it, no matter the cost.
By no means is Amara perfect, there are definitely some questionable actions by our protagonist. However, Harper paints the she-wolves lives so acutely and tragically that the reader can never blame Amara: we don’t always agree with her actions but you can see that she has to protect herself because she literally has no one else to do it for her.
Amara is also clever, sometimes too clever for her owner Felix who is quick to punish her for speaking out of turn. However, once Amara proves that her previous education can be profitable, Felix is on board, taking Amara down a new path and raising the reader’s hopes of a happy outcome for our favourite she-wolf. This is a credit to the characterisation within this novel: that as the readers witness possible happy endings being ripped away, our sheer desperation increases with Amara’s.


Despite her fascinating characters, Elodie Harper does not rest on her laurels and completely immerses her readers in the landscape of Pompeii. From the filthy cobbled streets to the graffiti to the shops, inns and sellers in the forum, everything is described in the most magnificent historical detail.
Harper also entrenches her characters in the class system, whereby a customer of a higher social status is often a target but seemingly out of reach for the she-wolves: a lower class of man is easy to attract but can often be violent. And love? Well that is just a fantasy!

Initially I have to tell you that I was slightly disappointed by the ending of The Wolf Den: the chapters leading up to the finale were so emotional and action-packed that the final lines almost fell flat. HOWEVER, this was all turned on its head when I was told The Wolf Den is merely the first in a trilogy! Now that I know Amara will be back I am eager to see what else she has in store for us.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wolf Den has been catching my eye for a long while now and last week I was lucky enough to be accepted for an ARC from @netgalley and it certainly didn't disappoint. I feel like I'm on a run of reading novels about women with great strength of character but are victims of the powerful men and societies around them. I love how Amara uses her wit and wiles to survive in the cruel and unjust world of Pompeii. My favourite character was Victoria who, for all her flaws, just wants to be cared for and loved in return. My heart breaks for the bond the five women have. I'll definitely be hoping to read more from Elodie Harper in the future.

I was really looking forward to this book, two of my children are classicists and I am very familiar with Roman literature and history, and I was intrigued by the premise of this book.

I was not disappointed, it is a brilliant book. It follows Amara, the daughter of a doctor for Attica, who due to circumstances beyond her control, finds herself sold into slavery and ends up as a prostitute, owned by Felix, a money lender and owner of a Pompeii brothel. Amara is a very talented, intelligent woman, and we feel her desperation at the life she is forced to live and the utter powerlessness of being a slave, with absolutely no control over her own life. However, this is partly why the book is so fantastic, because it gives a voice to Amara and the other women in the Wolf Den, who are all strong, remarkable, resilient women.

There are elements of this book that are heartbreaking, but it is also filled with love, warmth, the power of friendship and hope and I wanted so much more for every single one of the women of the Wolf Den.

It was great to meet real characters from the period such as Pliny, and the author depicted those characters very sensitively. Actually, the character depictions in this book are its real strength. Every single character is believable, and the author is able to really bring them to life. The real strength of the characters is that they are multifaceted and have numerous elements to their personality. So, Amara, who is the heroine of the book, does at times display characteristics that were quite unpleasant, but it didn’t make her a less sympathetic character, it actually made her human and I could understand why she acted as she did. Likewise, Felix who was generally brutal and nasty, displayed a softer side of his nature at times, and I could understand why Amara and Victoria wanted to please him.. Although he is really the villain of the piece, I couldn’t dislike him, I was almost as invested in him as I was in Amara, which shows how talented the author is at creating characters that readers can engage with and become invested in.

I really would urge everyone to read this book, it is fantastic. The author has researched the period and the life of slaves, and is able to give a voice to slave women, whose voice is very rarely, if ever heard. I will be buying this book for my classicist children and I hope they love it as much as I did.

Thank you to Apollo and Netgalley for an arc in return for a honest review.

The Wolf Den is a stunning start to this trilogy featuring the forgotten women of Pompeii. Sold by her mother into slavery, Amara ends up being bought by Felix and enters the sex trade as a prostitute working in a brothel known as The Wolf Den. Her relationships and friendships with the other women who live and work there are at the heart of this ambitious novel and we can only hope that Amara will be able to escape from the life she has found herself living. She is beautiful and desirable but beneath her obvious attributes lay a clever, determined and strong character who will never give up her dream of becoming free. Although her life revolves around pleasuring the many different classes of men who live in Pompeii, these acts aren’t graphically described although there is some sexual language used of course throughout.

The setting of Pompeii pops out of this book almost like a 3D picture book with the beautifully descriptive narrative bringing it visually to life with a stunning accuracy. People may think Elodie has used artistic license with some of the places the girls visit such as the “fast food” places but these definitely existed as I know from personal experience! And I loved seeing the city a few years before the event that we know is ahead, watching the citizens go about their daily routines, and also following characters who have ended up there through no choice of their own as many inhabitants weren’t local but had journeyed from other countries due to the position of the city in relationship to the trading of goods and, of course, people.

I adored this book and read it with a ferocious interest in the outcome for these women. Their friendships and social interactions kept them feeling alive and seen in a society where prostitution was just seen as another trade. The graffiti around the city is used throughout The Wolf Den and woven into the storyline to bring it further to life for the reader but it’s the women themselves who stay at the heart of this wonderfully crafted novel and following their personal journeys felt like a privilege. I can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy and await book 2 with very little patience! Haunting, empowering and brutal-one of my books of the year!

Couldn't put this down!

Elodie Harper has created such an intricate cast of characters and paints such a vivid picture of Pompeii that I got completely swept up in the world of Amara and her family at the Wolf Den.

One thing that really stood out to me was the way Amara's survival instinct was balanced with her love for her friends. She felt like such an authentic character and her decisions throughout the book made perfect sense to me.

Similarly, the relationships between various characters - and the often transactional and traumatic nature of those relationships - were presented with such tact and felt incredibly real.

An astonishing tale of slavery, survival and friendship that I would HIGHLY recommend.

Also just seen from reading other reviews that this is the first book in a trilogy - excellent news!

The Wolf Den is set in the Roman world of Pompeii, where slavery is an accepted part of life. Once a respected doctor's daughter, Amara has fallen far. Sold into slavery, her journey has hit rock bottom when we meet her, a prostitute in a lowly brothel in Pompeii, owned by a cruel pimp and loan shark.

Despite her desperate situation, Amara's bravery and determination shines through. This is her story - and the story of the other women in the brothel. It is filled with cruelty, violence, sexual abuse and desperation but also friendship, hope and love. I loved the strength of the female friendships and the range of responses to trauma. Both female and males in a variety of different situations are portrayed as experiencing different levels and types of trauma. Each responds in their own personal way without any cliche or stereotype.

Compelling and vivid, at times this was a hard and emotional read, but it had uplifting moments that balanced out well.

Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read the wolf den
I loved reading about life in Pompeii even with the controversial issues of slavery and prostitution ect.
Amara is a beautifully written character 👏 I will be recommending this book to all my book buddies.

What a terrific read! The main characters are prostitutes trapped in a cruel ancient Roman world of Pompeii, where women have seemingly little direct power. They’ve all come to slavery by different paths and cope with it in different ways. The story focuses on the relationships between the women and the ways they protect and support each other as best they can. Through their eyes we see all different levels of Pompeiian society, as the women are sent out to serve men of all classes. The women use their own persuasive powers and cunning to survive and attempt to buy their freedom. The descriptions of Pompeii are vivid and historically accurate. I’ll confess, I didn’t pay attention to the dates noted and kept waiting for Vesuvius to explode. Apparently that will happen in the final book of what is said to be a trilogy. Thanks to author, publisher and NetGalley for preview copy.

This book is full of horrific acts woven beautifully into a historical fiction you almost dont notice the brutality.

Transported back in time we are in a world where peopple are owned by masters and sold at will. The story is based in southern Italy, in Pompei. The way the backdrop was set up you could easily imagine the streets, the brothel and all the other locations the girls visit.

Whilst the story is about Amara, its really about the friendship, strength and survial of a group of girls in a horrible situation. Its also about love and loss. Amara is brave, and loyal making her a great lead character. Shes in a bad place and is trying to work out how to make life better..

The book didnt end how I expected it to, and there were moments that I just wanted to be able to hug some characters which makes me realise how involved in the book I became. Im not generally a fan of this genre but I absolutly loved both the writing and the story.

This is a beautifully written book about the life of Pompeii’s forgotten women, slaves and prostitutes.

This book follows the life of Amara, a doctors daughter who is both beautiful and educated but when her father dies and her mother’s fortune dwindles she is sold of to be a house slave and then again to her current master Felix, owner of The Wolf Den, to be a brothel worker.
Amara wants nothing more than her freedom and this story tells of what she will do to achieve her biggest dream.

This book dives into what life as a prostitute working in the ‘wolf den’ is like, it tells of the harrowing truths of what the women had to go through, struggling both physically and emotionally night after night to keep there customers and master happy.

Through this book you see how resourceful and clever Amara is, how she turns her misfortunes around and how she begins to work her way out of her situation.
You really see how strong Amara and her friends are, how they continue to live and strive for more even through all the cruelty and oppression they endure.

I loved the vivid descriptions in this book, as heartbreaking as the story was in places you really got a feel for the places, the people and even the food. I could clearly picture what was going.

This was such an enjoyable and easy read, I could have easily read more about Amara and although there are no major cliffhangers I can’t wait to continue the story in the next book.

I would be wary of reading this book if you are easily triggered by sexual and physical abuse and rape.

This book contains graphic depictions of sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse in the context of historical slavery. It also contains suicide.
I enjoyed this novel- I've read many historical novels set in somewhat seedy European cities, but never one set in an ancient red light district. The female cast is well-realised; no single character is used to represent one response to trauma (there are no silent victims or secret rebels- everybody grieves, survives and fights in different ways, at different times)
Some of the vocabulary (clothing, housewares etc) was unfamiliar to me but easy to understand with context clues. The setting was brutal- alternately muddy or parched, with thugs round every corner waiting to scar a girl's face and destroy her living. There is a gulf between the characters' world and the 'respectable' world their clients live in, but it's all to easy to slip down. Working class families are stuck in endless debt cycles; children are hard to afford but impossible to avoid. Once you've slipped it's extremely difficult to reclaim your former place, harder even than building oneself up from nothing. I want to learn what happens to these women next- will the ones who have succeeded carry their friends with them, or will the demands of respectable society force them to break with their loved ones?

Well I never thought I would read a book about prostitutes in Roman Times but here I am writting a review for one, The Wolf Den is a whore house in Pompeii run by the whore master Felix a man who thinks nothing of buying slave women to work in his establishment whether they want to or not. One of the girls is Amara, she was a educated doctors daughter who got sold by her mother after her beloved father dies, sold initially as a concubine she then gets sold into slavery and prostitution, like all the girls in the den she longs for her freedom but knows she is unlikely to ever get it.
Elodie Harper writes beautifully and it was very descriptive and you are really drawn in by the characters involved but I was dissapointed by the ending, but apparently this is the first of a trilogy so mabe Amaras story isn't over yet.

Amara, once beloved doctor's daughter, now a slave prostitute in ancient Pompeii. Her mother sold her to ensure Amara's survival. Every day is a struggle for her and her friends, but she is clever and ambitious and she aims for freedom. Will she succeed?

Beautifully written, with great compassion and with deep insight into a human soul. Working in a brothel, so called wolf den/lupanar and women there were known as she-wolves, they have to howl as wolves to call customers in a brothel. Life as a prostitute, disgust, panic, obliterating blankness. An aversion to being touched... Heartbreaking. And neverending yearning for freedom. Of body and a soul.

Roman society was based on slaves and their work, and Elodie Harper describes their life with the greatest sensibility and respect.

Atmosphere and characters are perfect, the reader is totally and immediately immersed in a story.

Wonderful reading.

4.5 stars


As a big fan of Circe I truly loved this book...

It’s a poignant story set in a Brothel nicknamed ‘The Wolf Den’ in Pompeii

After the death of her father, Amara is sold by her mother, as a prostitute and slave.


I wouldn’t call this an enjoyable read because of its nature, it’s heartbreaking.... but it grabs you in such a way that you’re left thinking about it long after you finish it.

The ‘she wolves’ who befriend Amara are brought to life in such a beautiful way, and their kindness for each other is heart warming,

Recommend to all

This is the story of Amara, a young girl sold into slavery who ends up a prostitute in Pompeii. It is the first part of a trilogy.
Strong, evocative writing brings Amara’s world to life. Pompeii itself, where squalor and luxury, kindness and cruelty, nobility and degradation exist side by side. Forced to sell themselves daily or starve, Amara and her companions seem powerless to change their fate; nevertheless we see moments of humour, the small daily triumphs which give them hope, and for Amara in particular, the determination to escape this life. But how much of herself is she willing to give up in order to be free?
I found this book very difficult to put down.

Amara is given her name after being sold into slavery by her mother - it is halfway between love and bitterness, and that sets the tone for a solid story that combines historical facts about Pompeii's brothels with a fictional account of what life must really have been like for women in Pompeii's heyday.

The settings are beautifully realised, the everyday brought to life through the many characters who inhabit the pages, showing different circumstances and standards for the men and women who live in Pompeii's brothel and those they come into contact with.

I found myself rooting for Amara from the start, and her story shows how she faces and overcomes her situation with a wit and intelligence that clearly wasn't expected of her. Another set of stories that builds up a picture of women's experience of the Roman Empire, educational and moving at the same time.

A Beautifully written and deeply poignant tale of power,privilege and the struggles of survival —reimagining the lives of Pompeii’s oft-forgotten women.

It’s set largely in Pompeii’s infamous Brothel, Lupanar ‘The Wolf Den’ and told from the POV of Amara,a slave and prostitute.

Her only value lies with her body and the desire she can incite from her patrons.

Sold by her mother and owned by a man she despises, Amara spends her days biding her time with her fellow she-wolves (and hiding how sharp,clever and resourceful she can be)— waiting for the opportunity to reverse her fortunes and find her freedom.

Because if she’s learnt anything, it’s that in Pompeii everything has a price. The only question is,how much will that freedom cost her?

This is one of the most emotionally compelling and undeniably gripping historical novels I’ve read this year and it’s left me an emotional wreck.

I thought Amara and the other she-wolves were expertly portrayed and I truly empathised with their plight. I really loved Amara, her strength despite the oppression and cruelty she experiences,was inspiring—a woman determined to survive, and thrive after all she has endured.

I also absolutely loved the writing style, so richly detailed it was easy to feel transported to the ancient city. I also found it filled to bursting with well researched historical details that definitely humanised the people of Pompeii—I found the quotes taken from graffiti found in Pompeii at the beginning of several chapters quite interesting (it added context to the she-wolves and their patron’s lives)

I also just wanted to warn that the author does touch on some pretty difficult subjects such as Slavery,physical abuse,emotional abuse and rape throughout the novel so if you find these topics upsetting it’s best to steer clear of this one.

Overall, a beautifully written and well researched historical novel, that gives a voice to the many invisible women that time and history have mostly forgotten—if your a history buff or interested in roman historical fiction,then you should definitely give this a read.

I’d also really like to thank Head of Zeus and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

I was given the e-arc of The Wolf Den by Eloise Harper by Head of Zeus and NetGalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

The Wolf Den focuses on Amara, a slave owned by the brothel keeper in Pompeii. Originally born the daughter of a doctor in Greece, educated, beautiful and fiercely determined, she was sold by her mother when her family’s fortunes were depleted after the death of her father.

The story of Amara’s life and that of the other slave prostitutes is not one to enjoy, but it is totally captivating, at times bitterly amusing, and heartbreaking. These women are slaves, they are fully under the command of the brothel owner Felix, and have neither control nor autonomy over their lives or bodies. The only autonomy they have is their self, something that is difficult to maintain when all other freedoms are out of reach.

Despite this, the She-Wolves are a community, bonding and uniting to improve their lot in life, albeit in small ways through small kindnesses, supporting one another as best they can.

Amara wasn’t born a slave and is desperate to escape the brothel and slavery, and through the course of the story inveigles her way into her master Felix’s money lending business, working on his accounts and using her musical skills, with the single aim of freedom.

This book immerses you in the world of Pompeii prior to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius - not a spoiler for this first book in a trilogy. The setting is well researched and written, ensuring you aren’t mired in an historical time, but actually seeing Amara’s life and it delivers a message that is still true to this day, for there are still women who live lives with no control or autonomy.

This is an excellent debut that I couldn’t tear myself away from, and if you enjoyed Circe or Sistersong, then I highly recommend The Wolf Den.