Charm & Strange

3.5 stars. It borders on 4, but not quite, because some of the characters developed relationships too fast, or the element of time seemed to skip forward too much. A little spoilery. Not too much.

That being said. Wow. I was mightily impressed. Ms Kuehn writes beautifully. She never condescends to her readers. There is depth and darkness in this novel.

Win is a prep school boy in VT with a troubled past. He hides his true name to all but one person, who has since seemed to become his antagonist (and this character gets muddled for me). He and his siblings were sexually abused as children by their horrible father, and he creates an alternate reality in which they are all possess wolves inside of them. So werewolves become his means of explaining to himself everything that happened.

You deduce quickly that abuse is happening. But the story takes an even darker turn toward the end, when you realize what else Win has survived.

I would most certainly read Ms Kuehn again. She has a mature style. It's almost like literary fiction because it contains beautiful sentences and meaning, but it's better than most litfic. In fact, I think I will look her up in my local library now.