Thank you to NetGalley, West 44 Books, Rosen Publishing Group, and Maija Barnett for the opportunity to read In the Minds of Wolves in exchange for an honest review.

In the Minds of Wolves is a HiLo novel-in-verse, meaning low readability, but high interest. This follows the perspective of Hazel, a recently turned werewolf. Of course, she cannot show herself to her sister or father. They wouldn't believe it! So she tries to leave hints that she merely ran away.
Pack life has its challenges, as does shifting. Among their challenges is the battle for land. The werewolves aim to keep their forest land from being developed by a major company. When Hazel's sister gets a job with the development company, she struggles with the balance and loyalty between family and pack.

The perspective of this novel is unique in its element in that the reader is already in the perspective of Hazel as a wolf, as opposed to drawing out a turn as a key aspect of the story. It focuses on pack life and the family left behind. While it covers some more basic elements of werewolf living and lore, the pack aiming to keep the development company from destroying their land is an interesting economic aspect to the novel. It makes exploring the werewolf perspective fun and accessible for teen readers, while also keeping an air of seriousness regarding family and corporation elements.

After reading a number of other novels by Maija Barnett, I knew this one would be a must-read as well. Thoughtful and crafty, this makes for an intriguing, accessible werewolf novel for a young adult audience.

Thank you so much to Rosen Publishing/ West 44 Books and Netgalley for the ebook to read and review.

Hazel is a newly turned wolf, having to adjust to the new way of living. But the pack have an ulterior motive for having turned her. There’s a resort being built on what little is left of their land and they needed her help to get access to the buildings and blow it up.

This was quite intense from the way that Hazel got treated, to the plans they had made to destroy an entire resort building and the people within it. Then for all her training and things she had to do in order to become an actual wolf in their pack. They didn’t make it easy and though she got choices they weren’t the choices she wanted nor enough time to settle with the choices.

I liked the creation of this wolf pack world, hidden in the shadows of the coastal woods and how they’d been made up from fractured human beings to a fractured wolf pack family. There was so much detail about their lives and the ways they did things, and the way they transitioned back to humans. It was really very well crafted and thought out.

This would be a really great read for young adult audiences, from the gripping story, the wolves and their pack, the environmental storylines, the messed up families and the coming together and the rise of a she wolf. I really enjoyed the story it was very creative and so unique, it’s done in the wonderful verse style which really worked for this story so well.

We are following hazel who has been bitten by a wolf, she’s a wolf throughout the month and turns human one day. Her pack want to destroy a construction development to save the land but her family also work there too so it’s between helping her new family or her old family.

The story itself is told in a unique way as we are all in her thoughts everything that is happening we are witnessing as we read. And we learn about basically the kinds of wolves no pun intended. As we are watching her adapt to it all.

It was unique and interesting short read, and I did read it pretty fast to be fair, ended nice and was a standalone. But with it being so short we aren’t really able to fully invest in the characters for me as I like a bit more hence why it’s 3 stars

An excellent, fast-paced read for young adult audiences and lovers of nature. A call to environmentalism and care for forests is strong in this story. Lyrically stunning, with a clear and consistent first-person narration that barrels the story forward while holding interest. The different connections between the different characters brought great balance to the range of emotions. Highly recommended!

We've got it wrong about werewolves – or at least, these beasts in the coastal forests of Maine do it differently. They're wolf until the full moon, when they turn back to their human form for the one day. Freshly formed is Hazel, leaving her poor fisher father and the younger sister adamant she has not just left home, so close is the nurturing bond between them. Hazel hasn't gone far, as she's with the small pack that includes the wolf that turned her, and they're training her up to get better at her new life, in case for some reason she cannot stick around. But what she doesn't know is that, with the life of the forests and the true wolves in mind, they're also ensuring she's willing and able to do something else as well…

This is pretty much the long-short-story-as-verse, as opposed to the all-out novel, but it's not at all bad for that. I have to say I found one big aspect of the plot quite clunky, but overall not ineffective – so all the flaws and issues here are but small caveats. This is meaty fun. I'd say it's at least a 12A, with details of the carnivorous instinct definitely on the page, as well as everything else the plot cooks up. But it's very readable, as this whole format generally is – the lines very short at times, and the pages allowed to speed past, often with a chapter/verse that is longer than the routine page or two.

Ultimately it wants to talk about the potential ills of <spoiler>eco-terrorism</spoiler>, and that to me was a rare enough topic to make this interesting. You're certainly taken into the heart of these woods, and the myth of these creatures is worn very lightly, making this our woodland, our world. Yes, all told this is a success – it doesn't outlast its welcome, it doesn't pack the page with all the ins and outs and moral dilemmas of everything, but it grounds this situation with more-or-less believable families, both human and lupine, and for that it's a healthy four stars.