Audiobook provided by NetGalley and Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review.

CW: domestic abuse, human and animal violence and death

Inti Flynn grew up in Australia where she split time living with her career driven, policewoman mother, and her logger-turned-environmentalist father. Inti and her twin sister, Aggie, vowed in their teens to never live apart. And as with many twins, they developed their own language to communicate with each other. Inti has mirror-touch synesthesia, which was an interesting addition to the overall plot.

As Aggie follows Inti to Denali, Alaska so that Inti could study wolves, their life changes forever. Still reeling from the events that happened, Inti and Aggie are now in Scotland with Inti's scientific team as they reintroduce fourteen wolves into the remote Highlands... where the locals are less than pleased to see them. For me, the introduction of the wolves into a land where they had been eradicated was fascinating and I wanted to know more about it.

Now that the wolves are loose, Inti and her team are tracking how they acclimate to Scotland. They walk a tenuous line of letting the wolves be free, and also attempting to keep the Scottish farmers happy as too many of them are more than willing to shoot a wolf on sight to save their livestock. Especially after someone goes missing and the locals blame Inti's wolves. As Inti attempts to prove her wolves are innocent, she is forced to grapple with the horrors of her own past in order to solve the mystery.

This was a solid 4 star book for me.... until the last 10% when it was hard to accept how the events were playing out. It just didn't seem realistic to me when so much of ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES felt like it focused on the realities of typical wolf behavior vs. the misconceptions humans have about them.

It still was a really enjoyable read, but McConaghy just lost me there at the end. Saskia Maarleveld does a fabulous job with the audiobook narration, Maarleveld is quickly becoming one of my favorite audiobook narrators.

I really loved this unexpected book. The narrator is by far one of my new favorites and the story was so beautiful and heartbreaking. I did not expect to fall in love with this one as much as I did.

Just finished this wonderful audiobook. The narrator is amazing which to me can make or break a book. This book is about wolves that I knew nothing about, but the story is so much more. Two very different sisters, Aggie and Inti are the main human story. Inti is a wolf specialist challenged with reintroducing 14 wolves to the Scottish Highlands and Aggie is her messed up sister. Secrets are revealed through flashbacks. I have a new respect and understanding for wolves. I highly recommend this audiobook. Thanks to #netgalley and #macmillanaudio for my advanced copy.

This was a tough one to get through. I listened to the audiobook (narrated by Saskia Maarleveld who did *absolutely* incredibly) and it has taken me about a month and a half to get through the entire thing. It's not very long--just 8.5 hours as an audio--but the content was so dark and triggering at times that I had to take week-long breaks at a time. That being said, it was a heartbreakingly beautiful book, just tread lightly if you have any triggers associated with abusive relationships, sexual assault, animal death and violence, suicide, and dependent relationships.

I think the best way to describe this book is that it is about violence. Violence against women. Violence against animals. Violence against the environment. Violence brought on by trauma. Violence associated with mental health. Violence against humanity. Violence. But in the midst of this, there is a lingering, faint message of hope. Once There Were Wolves follows twin sisters Inti and Aggie. Inti and her team have traveled to Scotland to reintroduce wolves to an environment that they were exterminated in hundreds of years ago. The inhabitants of the Scottish village are upset, hostile, and afraid of the wolves being on their land and it does not make the experience easy. As a larger narrative unfolds of Inti desperately trying to save these wolves, we are also told about Inti and Aggie's childhood, teenage years, and the events that lead to Aggie now being mute and unable to function in society.

There is a lot to unpack in this book, and I don't really think the conversation can be condensed into a review. I think this would be a fabulous book for a book club or some other discussion. The fact that I received the audiobook was significant for me as a reader because I was absolutely enchanted by Saskia Maarleveld's narration. There were several points where I think I would have put it in down if I was reading a physical copy because it was really emotionally hard to get through for me.

I cried multiple times throughout this and I think the characters are going to sit with me for a long time. For people that can read its contents, I think this is an important book. I'm happy I read it and I will have my eye out in the future for more Charlotte McConaghy books and Saskia Maarleveld's narrations.

Solid 4 out of 5 stars.

**I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher!

I picked this book up for its absolutely killer title. It was definitely a judge-by-the-cover moment for me. And I was rewarded for that impulse! This was definitely one of my top reads of the year so far.

I listened to this book in just a couple of sittings. Saskia Maarleveld is a great narrator (I also loved her narration for Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network), and really added a sense of immediacy and emotion to the text – particularly in the information heavy segments about the wolf reintroduction program.

I really like the way the initial exposition was laid out. As I was unfamiliar with mirror touch synesthesia prior to reading this, Inti’s extreme levels of empathy and sympathetic pain lent an almost supernatural tone to the early chapters – we open on her getting gutted by her father, and what do you do with an opening line like that? How do you move forward into the real world from that point?

A warning to anyone thinking about picking up this book: It deals heavily and occasionally graphically with themes of domestic abuse and sexual assault. This was a throughline in the plot that shared, or maybe even superseded, prominence with the storyline that followed the wolves. I wasn’t expecting this. It was well done and moving and really interesting way to fill out the story, both as a way to parallel the narrative and to complicate the goals of reintegrating wolves into the wild. And this was done so well! At times early on in the story, I was worried about the ways the parallels were being drawn, worried that I’d turn a page and reach a point where the idea of predator reintroduction programs would hit too close a line to comparing the wolves to the human predators in the story—it seemed like the low hanging metaphorical fruit – but every explicit parallel that was drawn took the harder path of advocating for the wolves and the victims of domestic violence in ways that advocated for them all along the way.


***************Very mild spoilers below***************


I honestly struggled with rating this book, because as I said it is easily one of my top reads of the year so far, and it even inspired me to purchase the one of the author’s other books, <i>Migrations</i>, which I plan to read in the immediate future. The one thing that threw me off was pacing – I’d say that the first ¾ of the book were on track for a 5 star rating and the denouement did something of a speed run to wrap up the plot in ways that lost the more organic feel of the earlier parts of the story. The “mystery” resolves, as mysteries do, in the final chapters, but it was an easy conclusion to spot miles earlier in the story. And that was mostly ok for me! I was more interested in the wolves and the interpersonal relationships anyways (and I suspect the author was as well), but I don’t think the dominoes were quite lined up for the cascade of climactic moments that piled up there at the end.

TW: Domestic violence, sexual assault, animal abuse, mutilation of a corpse (both animal and human), animal death (dog and wolf)

"I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."
The narration of this audiobook was really well done especially for a single narrator. The "accents/voices" of different characters didn't feel forced or exaggerated.
The story itself had a lot going on and at times felt like this really could have been conceptualized into a couple of books instead of all being in this one story. It ended up coming together for the most part, although I think the ending was a little too clean/happy for the rest of the context of the book.

Do you listen to audiobooks when you hike? Hiking and listening is one of my all time favorite activities! And Once There Were Wolves was a perfect audiobook choice for that!

At the heart of this suspense/murder mystery novel is one of the greatest environmental crises of our lives: the loss of the ancient forests that covered the Earth for millions of years.

I have not read McConaghy’s previous novel, Migrations, so I have nothing to compare it to. I enjoyed Once There Were Wolves a lot, in fact, I could not stop listening! Yet, I was a bit disappointed by the ending.

The novel follows two sisters Inti and Aggie, as they travel to a remote Highlands town in Scotland. Inti is an environmental biologist, an expert on wolves. She is focused on reintroducing wolves to the areas they once inhabited but have since become extinct. It’s a global environmental effort: the reintroduction of the predators causes the movement of the prey, which in turn aids reforestation. All sounds good, right? Except the main livelihood of the people in the area is their livestock. If the wolves attack the livestock – the farmers will attack back.

Aggie and Inti are twins. They are inseparable, but their shared history is dark and complex. They grew up in Australia and British Columbia to separated parents. Aggies has experienced an extreme traumatic event she cannot completely recover from. Inti has a neurological condition called Mirror Touch Synesthesia, which causes her to feel sensations of touch when she sees someone else being touched. Even the animals.

The story is told from the POV of Inti which makes the narration remarkably interesting. It is symbolic in many ways. It’s as if the author asked, well, how do I make people that do not really care about animals start caring? Suppose I could make the main protagonist feel everything the wolves feel? In the book Inti’s Mirror Touch Synesthesia is much more pronounced than what it usually is in real life (based on my admittedly not very thorough research), rendering her almost incapacitated at times. Especially when she feels pain. But this disability (or a gift…depending on how you want to look at it) works as a highly effective tool in that it almost forces the reader to feel empathy. I know it seems far-fetched, but somehow McConaghy made it work!

All the parts about wolves were my absolute favorite! I loved the descriptions of the animal life, how gentle and family oriented they are. The author clearly researched the subject of predator reintroduction at length.

Where the novel is lacking in my opinion is the suspense/whodunnit part. When one farmer dies in the middle of the night, Inti is convinced that the murderer was trying to “frame” the wolves, and she is determined to find this person! Because if indeed it was the wolf…her project will undoubtedly come to an end. The wolves will be killed, and she cannot let it happen!

I guessed who the killer was early on. It is kind of obvious and is not very believable all at the same time. Inti’s reliability as a narrator is questioned many times because of her very obvious PTSD. But even taking all of that confusion into account, if you read a lot of thrillers, it will not be hard for you to guess. This being said I do not think that the murder mystery part is important enough here to discredit the whole novel.

I loved how at the very end Inti realizes that she needs to work together with the farmers, instead of treating them like an enemy. When she got to know them a little better, she could clearly see how many of them cared deeply about the animals, both the domesticated ones and the wild ones, and about the ancient Scottish forests.

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed by the ending. I felt that the author created a living situation for the main protagonist that was essentially unsustainable. And the way she “resolved it” at the very end was in my opinion entirely unsatisfying (as in…I’d rather see Aggie get help?).

I also imagine that the animal lovers will have a hard time with the ending. One event that takes place at the very end is especially hard to swallow. I am sure you have guessed by now that not all wolves survived. But that one particular death seemed just so unfair and unnecessary. Another animal sacrifice to cover up human mistakes.

Overall, I think you will really enjoy Once There Were Wolves if you like books with a strong environmental focus, like The Overstory.

The audiobook is fantastic and is highly recommended IF you enjoy accented narrations. The narrator, Saskia Maarleveld, is magnificent as always, and her Scottish accents are 100% (not that I am an expert 😊. However, I do believe that I would have enjoyed reading the physical book as well.

Triggers: absolutely brutal domestic violence, animal cruelty.

Thank you NetGalley, MacMillan Audio and Charlotte McConanghy for gifting me this Advanced Listening Copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book is a little darker than the previous book, but contained the same lyrical descriptive language readers loved in Migrations. Similar to the previous book, this story ties together a human story with a story/education on nature (wolves & climate change).
The author (and narrator of the audio version) do an excellent job expressing emotions & pulling the reader into the story so you’re not quite sure what to believe.

Narrated by Saskia Maarleveld who does an amazing job at distinguishing accents/voices for each character and elaborates on the emotions from the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC of Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy! This is out 08/03!

I tend to love any book that takes place in the Scottish Highlands and this was no different. I truly loved the narration with this book, I think that it elevated the already lyrical way this story was written (just really wish Netgalley audios didn't have that echo). I liked the main character, Inti, and found that her traumas and quirks were portrayed in an authentic way without anything feeling repetitive. Her passion for the wolves was intense, but once I learned her story more I started to get it. I liked how this was about predators and prey and how that could mean not only how we are with our environment, but how we as humans can be with each other.

Excellent example of brilliant literature!

The author uses parallels between the animal world and the human world in an impressive way. Words are so important in this novel because each carefully chosen description paints a vivid picture making this a phenomenal read.

Relationships, whether human or animal, are the pivotal point in this novel. Add in a well timed murder mystery and this makes for a book you won't want to stop reading once you start.

Highly recommend!

Well. Once There Were Wolves was something. Engrossing, enlightening, controversial: it captivated me from the start and kept me spellbound until the unexpected conclusion. By the time I got around to listening to Once There Were Wolves, I had completely forgotten anything I might previously have known or read about the author, Charlotte McConaghy, so my audio experience was free of expectations or preconceived judgment. I literally had no idea what I was getting into when I began listening. What I got into was a gripping story of a young woman fighting the world: a loner in an environment hostile to her personally and to her cause: reintroducing wolves into the wilds of Scotland. I found myself describing the story to family members and searching for information about the real-world status of wolves in Britain, wishing I had a paper copy of the book in my hand to read any accompanying notes.
While engrossed and hugely in awe of the author's skill, I nevertheless found myself frequently angry with the main character's, Inti's, thoughts and actions. She did not choose an easy life, and her experiences and decisions were not always easy to read/hear. (Saskia Maarleveld's narration was wonderful.) An eternal optimist, I found the frequent reminders of the prevalence of spousal abuse to be a bit distracting. Though a loner, Inti is, in fact, a twin, and the girls' persistent memories of their mother's' work fighting abusive men and then their own experiences seemed a story onto itself at times that distracted from the primary narrative. The author’s skill, however, at sinking the reader completely into her world: the sights, sounds, smells, bite of frost, and cracking of ice is superbly rendered. I was in Scotland amidst first the bitter cold and later the beauty of emerging spring and could hear the howl of the wolves and see the piercing gleam of their steady and defiant stares. This immersion alone made finishing the book hard, as I didn’t want to leave her brilliantly immersive world, but the story’s ending was satisfying and complete. I look forward to rereading the book in the future.

Hmm.

This would have been a four-star read until the ending, which was so unbelievable.

I enjoyed listening to this. I found the characters to be interesting and compelling and I loved McConaghy's writing style and focus on nature. I loved learning about wolves (and am now basically a supporter of wolf reintroduction programs!) and seeing how Inti interacted with them.

The narrator also did an excellent job with many different accents.

However, as strong as the writing was regarding the wolves and nature, I think that McConaghy bit off a little more than she could chew. Plot threads are brought up and then dropped for much of the book. (Specifically the horse....she's barely mentioned throughout the book and then becomes important in the ending.) This feels like lazy writing. Perhaps it needed one more round of edits to really make everything connect.

Loved the setting, the nature, the descriptive writing, was disappointed by the uneven plot threads, the romance, and the ending.


Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot and definitely wanted to know what happened next, despite some flaws in the storytelling. It reminded me a lot of the Lightkeepers by Abby Geni and I think I liked it for similar reasons, though the Lightkeepers is the better book.

What an immersive reading experience!! McConaghy is very good at capturing us reader’s attention from the start and she mentally transports us to the Scottish lands this time. Both in Migrations and Once there were wolves, we incident acute climate change, its effect on people’s mentality, nature and wildlife.

This story has everything- literature, love, family drama, loyalty struggle and a little mystery. How all these elements are rolled into one story about letting the wolves go free in a dystopian world, is just too amazing. The prose is beautiful and the audio narration complemented it very well. If you love nature and everything in it, you’ll love this book too.

Welcome to my auto-buy authors’ list Charlotte. I highly recipe the audiobook!! Thank you Flatiron / Macmillan audio via Netgalley for the alc.

With an incredibly atmospheric, remote setting, a unique premise and beautiful prose you are instantly - from line one - transported into this story. The tension is thick straight away and yet there is an innate beauty and emotion that shines through.

Imagine feeling the fears, confusion, pain of living things around you. Imagine devoting your work to helping those living things. Intense, wouldn’t you say.

This novel blew me away and transported me in a way that many books struggle to do. Absolutely wonderful. Highly recommend.

As in her debut novel, MIGRATIONS, Charlotte McConaghy explores climate change and its far-reaching impacts in an incredibly engaging way in her latest, ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES.

Biologist Inti Flynn arrives in the Scotish Highlands with her twin sister, Aggie, to introduce fourteen gray wolves into the wilderness. The sisters arrive with dark secrets from the past that they can’t outrun. When a local farmer is found dead, Inti is left to wonder if one of her wolves was to blame or if someone she loves is involved.

This is a beautifully written story that centers around wolves and their relationships with humans in the rich forests of Scotland. The parallels between the lives of wolves and humans was something I hadn’t considered before. I found it fascinating that wolves mourn the loss of a loved one in a similar way as humans: crying out into the night.

At times, we may all find ourselves blind to shortcomings of the ones we love most. ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES explores loyalty and family devotion in a way that really resonated with me.

Saskia Maarkevekd did an incredible job with the audiobook narration. I would highly recommend this book in audio format.

Rating: 4/5
AVAILABLE:: August 3rd, 2021

A big thank you to @netgalley, @macmillanaudio, and @flatironbooks for an ALC in exchange for an honest

Beautifully written, heartbreaking, multi-layered novel about a scientist’s work to reintroduce wolves to the highlands of Scotland. This story has it all: romance, intrigue, mystery, and family drama. I was astonished at how intricate and yet fascinating it all was. This excellent book should be on everyone’s must-read list.

One tiny caveat: the author used the phrase “bloody pu**y muck” in the context of childbirth. What on earth? Can we just get a hard NO all around for that usage? Horrible. Other than that, the book is flawless.

Thank you #NetGalley for the audio #ARC of #OnceThereWereWolves!

I have a special love for books that break my heart. Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy is absolutely one of those books. ⁠
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This story follows Inti Flynn, the leader of a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing wolves into the Scottish Highlands. The goal is that reintroducing these wolves will help rebalance the ecosystem - however, the townsfolk are less than excited. Inti brings her twin sister Aggie along for the journey, hoping that the peace of the forest will help heal some of her past trauma. ⁠
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The story is told in a similar way to her first book Migrations. Charlotte's ability to write about trauma, conversation, and healing is one of the best I have ever read. The writing style is a work of art. The imagery of Scotland Highlands is so detailed that I can imagine myself there. ⁠
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The narrator only added to this amazing book. Her tone and inflections were perfectly done and aided in the story.⁠
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This is one of those books that will not be for everyone. There is a lot of graphic and violent parts to this book. However, if you're willing to allow this book to slowly burn - I promise it will be worth your time. ⁠
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Thank you to the author, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for an audio ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review. It's hitting shelves August 3.

I had a fantastic time listening the very entertaining Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy and narrated by the very talented Saskia Maarleveld .

This is very atmospheric, intense , emotional , murder mystery with many plots and subplot.
It deals with climate change , animal preservation, wildlife , sisterhood, rape, physical and verbal abuse of women and toxic relationships.

Saskia Maarleveld narration was faultless. Her voices and accents were spot on. She really transported me to the Highland of Scotland .

I just reviewed Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy. #NetGalley #MacMillanAudio

Did you have a chance to read Migrations last year? It was a book that has stuck with me because of the exquisite writing. Charlotte McConaghy is back this year with one that I loved even more.

Inti and her twin sister, Aggie, have arrived in Scotland with a team of biologists to reintroduce fourteen wolves into the Highlands. The local farmers aren’t in favor of this plan and one of the wolves is quickly killed. Inti’s determination to protect her animals comes at the cost of letting someone get away with murder.
Inti has a unique condition called mirror touch synesthesia which means that she can actually feels what others experience. She has grown up as the quieter twin while Aggie isn’t afraid of anything, even though it regularly gets her into trouble. They have divorced parents with very different ideologies and their life lessons are quite opposite.
This story is told in dual timelines reflecting both on how the twins are raised and what’s happening now in Scotland. I loved both storylines, seeing what experiences made the twins in to who they are, and also following the suspenseful events in the present. This author writes nature like no one else I’ve read and makes it feel so visceral. I loved this book.
The narration was amazing. The several accents were beautifully performed and the narration enhanced this book. Lovely.

Set to the backdrop of the Scottish highlands, Inti struggles to re-introduce wolves back to the wild. Within the first line of this book, we learn Inti has mirror touch synesthesia, allowing her to feel the pain she witnesses inflicted on other people and animals. Raised by two drastically different separated parents, Inti relies on her twin sister Aggie as her source of comfort and security. The timeline shifts from past to present, as we learn of their childhood and the struggles Inti is now facing in Scotland. The readers are questioning whether her mission to embed the wolves in a community that fears them will be successful.

As Inti immerses herself with the ongoing dramas in the village, we see her passion to defend a woman who is being domestically abused. Through her friendships and rivalries, the readers witness her desperation at saving both this woman and the wolves. As the plot progresses in present day time, Inti becomes deeply involved in a murder that will unveil the truth about the twin sisters' unsettling past.

If my brief synopsis grasped your attention, then this is precisely what happened to me when starting this audiobook. It wasn't hard to get fully invested in this because the narrator was phenomenal. She was able to quickly shift accents which added authenticity to the settings this story was taking place in. The pace of the story was fairly easy to follow in audiobook format.

As for my overall feelings about this book, I think it was trying to tackle too many genres (mystery, romance, environmentalism). The romantic relationship in this book felt incredibly forced and too quick. Whereas the mystery of the murder was underdeveloped; the murder only served purpose to the plot in the ~50% portion and conclusion of the book.

Inti and Aggie are both incredibly unhinged characters. The trauma that both of them faced is so evident based on their reactions to the situations in this book. At one point, the accusations that Inti was making weren't justified and didn't seem believable. Because this accusation drove a huge part of the plot, I felt that novel went downhill at this point.

The book had incredible potential if it only focused on one key storyline; overcomplicating the plot took away from the sole focus on Inti and the wolves. The wolves were only really mentioned at what seemed like random points and only when the plot was stalling. I didn't think there was very good character development with Inti as well. I was left feeling that nothing really significant changed from the first page of the novel to the last, leaving me underwhelmed overall. However, the imagery, descriptions and style of writing were fantastic and were what kept me reading. (If these are things you look for and value in a novel, I think you would be incredibly impressed with this one)