Wolf By Wolf

This book was amazing and everyone needs to have it on their radar and read it when it comes out in October. The premise alone drew me in, but this book was so much more than an alternate WWII outcome. This book focused on how it is who we are inside that matters and that we are all the same on the inside, we were all created equally.

That being said, this was I'm sure a massive undertaking for Ryan Graudin. This book focuses on a society in the 1950s where Hitler won and took over basically the world other than the Americas. It was fascinating for me to read about this different history where WWII did not end when it did. Added to this alternate reality was this epic motorcycle race across the continents. This was a great plot tool to add adventure and action to the plot as Yael attempts to complete her mission of killing Hitler and ending his reign.

The characters in this book are really great. We get a lot of background on Yael and this strange ability she has but we also get background on this alternate world and how the war unfolded. Yael is such an important character in terms of identity and self-confidence. She was terrorized as a child and physiologically altered (trying not to give away too much), but she still fought for what she believed in and ultimately joining the resistance.

I really enjoyed this book, however, I'm a little bit disappointed by the ending. I have so many questions still and feel unsatisfied with where the characters go from the end and how everything ties up. I can see how ending where it did works though in terms of deciding for yourself how the alternate world as a whole responds to the end of the story, but I wanted more. I feel like a huge plot point was introduced in the last few pages but not fully explained. As far as I know this is a standalone, so there are no future books to further explain the events of this book.

Overall, this is a great book that you need to pick up. It has both amazing writing and an amazing message about identity and being yourself.

I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Update: Ryan Graudin has now said this will be a duology, so I will actually get all my questions answered!

It's 1956 and Hitler won the war. Yael escaped from a death camp and is now part of the underground resistance working and plotting to rid the world of Hitler. Yael enters a cross continent race to win the iron cross and attend a ball with Hitler, where she will finally kill him and start the revolution.

I'm a sucker for anything WWII related. I'm fascinated and repulsed by it, of course. So I've had this book on my TBR forever. It didn't disappoint. I was a little surprised by the skin-shifting element just because I didn't know about it before I started reading, but it's so interesting and I really liked the idea. Ryan created a whole new world and reality after WWII, she did an incredible job with world building, including details that weren't even necessary to the story but helped imagine exactly what the world was like in the wake of Hitler's win.

I won't give anything away but there is some slight romance hinted at but it's not in the way you would think, which I LOVED and can't wait to see what comes of it in the next book. No annoying tropes, which is a win. And the ENDING. The ending. Most of the twists and turns in the book, I saw coming because I've read too many YA books. But the ending I did not anticipate for some reason and I yelled “NO!” and threw my book down. So yeah, pretty great ending that made me really happy I bought Blood for Blood at the same time, which I'm going to start reading as soon as I post this review.

Would I recommend?
Do you like YA, WWII fiction, and historical retellings? Then yes, for sure. It's a tough and sad read in places, as anticipated. But worth it, for sure.

4.5 stars!

2,5 stars

Okay, to be honest, I had a feeling this book wasn't going to be the love of my life from the beginning, but the cover looked kind of cool. I'm not a huge WW2 junkie. Also, not really into YA, especially not the kind with female protagonists. So yeah, while I wasn't so crazy about the premise, I decided to rol with it and do this.

Hitler took over the world, along with Emperor Hirohito (or Showa, if you prefer) and as everyone else, even the Nazis wanted to have some fun, so they decided to hold a motorbike race through the world from Berlin to Tokyo for the young guys. Last year a girl, Adele Wolfe pretending to be her own twin, Felix, won it and Hitler himself seemed to take a liking to her. This year... shit was going to be even wilder. Yael, a concentration camp escapee, who got shapeshifting abilities through Nazi experiments was going to pretend to be her, win again, kill Hitler and launch the rebellion of the resistance.
Sounds kinda cool, full of action, right?

Aaaand it was. I have to tell you, it was easy to just get into it and read like the wind. The topic, especially in the flashback scenes was pretty damn heavy, but the way it was written and the fact that it was based on some well known historical context made it fast to get into. I could appreciate it. A couple of times there were some weird figures of speech I found slightly awkward and artsy-fartsy, but the overall impression was good enough, with vivid pictures and real emotion, still not too superfluous to weaken the action. If not for some pretty tough training I went to, I could have read it in two nights.

There were some annoying issues, though. So... a little PSA for authors; if you write characters who speak a language other than the one you use, please, please do not just insert a word or two in the middle of sentences in theirs. PLEASE. Yeah, I know the people in the book mostly speak German, I don't need them to say Sheisse every chapter. It's okay, I'll still remember.
Another thing is, if you write a very competitive, cutthroat situation with a fight to death and there are multiple teen girls... don't just make them instant best friends, with love and respect, just because they're girls. I want to see some real, passionate fight between girls, like in real life when they are rivals. Thank you.

The protagonist was fine, I was okay with her, not totally enamoured, but I found her acceptable. The love interest, Luka Löve was... again, okay. Devilishly handsome, arrogant, the cool guy on the block. Yay. Adele's bother (this year also joining the Nazi Paris-Dakar Rally) was lovely, though. I am a sucker for sibling stories and this Felix kid is a good brother. Part of me wanted him to be the love interest, but of course Yael is wearing his sister's face, so that would be a whole different genre...

It ended on a note that was a bit of a twist and also the master plan reaching another chapter, so I will be reading the sequel, even though I'm not insanely invested. It was an adequate novel, a fine enough way of spending my time, I am just not convinced I was the target audience of it.

Scheisse and keep rolling.

dnf @ 80%

i literally don't care anymore. i'm so close to finishing and i don't care what happens? i know i'm not going to pick it up again.

Exciting and captivating alternative history. I may read it with my students.

WWII with an alternative outcome, blended with the thaumaturgy of the fantasy genre, Wolf by Wolf has got to be the most underrated YA genre fiction series I've read in years. Why aren't more people talking about this, because damn is it good.

The pacing is not too quick, nor are the characters interpreted too little. Ryan successfully creates an illusive tale out that originates from a dreadful catastrophe.

Also gotta love a strong heroine.

I've been reading this book since forever (slightly over exaggerated since it's been 10 days, but I usually do finish a 400 page book in less than a day), so today I said “fuck it” and went ahead and finished it.

That oughta tell you enough about my investment in this book. The story itself is interesting - what if the Nazis won the war, and what if the experiments they conducted lead into a certain girl, Yael, being able to change her appearance at will.

Yael is on a mission to kill Hitler, and to do this she has to, disguised as Adele Wolfe, win a (very long) race. But of course, not everything goes as planned.

I can't immediately say what I didn't like about the book, or what kept me from really immersing in it, but I just didn't. I liked Yael and I liked Luka and Felix, but everything else was just very shortly touched upon. The story is more action-packed than anything else, so it does make for a pretty fast read (combined with short chapters), but not a very soothing one (for me).

Well, this book has made my week. I'd even say that this book has gone so far as to make my year. Wolf by Wolf is a novel that has perhaps the most interesting premise I have read so far. When I first read the summary on Goodreads I couldn't help but be excited. I mean, c'mon, it's a motorcycle race to kill Hitler! How can you not make that cool?!?! And thankfully, the author makes every opportunity she can to have this story be as awesome as possible. The writing of the actions scenes is perfect, the writing of the characters is perfect. Even the way the plot is delivered, it all just culminates into a ball of awesomeness that just might have enough power to shoot it's way up to my top of the Best of list of 2016 (and believe me, I don't make that prediction lightly).

I think the element that caught my eye, other than the premise, is how each character is written so well. Each one of them is given believable motivations for doing what they do. Adele Wolf wants to race so that she isn't reduced to becoming birth mother for the third Reich, and her brother wants her to come home and help her with a crumbling family. Even the main villain who gives Yael her powers has good motivations. Then, I also enjoyed how the characters aren't as stupid as they could have been. While on the race, Yael inevitably makes mistakes in Adele's character that other people are bound to notice, which they do, and what's more, they call her on her perceived BS actions. They see her behavior as off, to say the least, and they are not afraid to say so. Where I feel that a lesser author would not capitalize on the moment, Graudin makes the most of it, providing tension for each and every scene.

And speaking of tension, there are so many different ways that Graudin makes tension in this novel, I've lost count. She is talented enough to keep the reader guessing with something happening at every turn, and it isn't just with the racing scenes, which, while they are heart poundingly good, are few and far between. The author instead manages to create scenes that help to delve in many different types of relationships and situations that makes one understand how dangerous an operation like this would be if it ever took place in the real world. While I won't spoil anything let me just say that anything can, and does happen on this race, with twists and turns that have just as much to do with the relationships between various major and minor characters, as it does the race track.

The exposition is written very well. Instead of getting one massive info dump on what Yael's life was like before she joined the resistance, we see how she came to be through each wolf that is tattooed on her arm. Each one represents a significant person to her, and it is through them that we learn more about her life in flashbacks. I'd say that it is a tad convenient that she just happens to think about each person's wolf and relation to her in chronological order, when perhaps a normal person wouldn't do so, but whatever. It is a gripe so small, I can pretend it isn't there.

I also like how the problems of identity are clearly expounded upon in this book. Yael's powers allow her to change almost everything about herself, except for age, gender, and any tattoos she gets. This means that, while she has trouble thinking about who she is in the present, she cannot forget her horrible past, in which her loved ones were killed, and when she received her powers in horrible, painful experiments. This shows that she is not perfect, and this is something that she must overcome and be able to get past as she completes her mission. This I feel helps for her to becomes one of my favorite characters of 2016.

Honestly, this book was absolutely amazing, right down to the ending, which, obviously, I won't spoil. Let's just say that it is excellently written, and makes sense, given what has been established before now in the exposition. I think this is, so far, one of my favorite books of the year, and for that, and because I truly cannot find any worthwhile fault with it, I give it a five out of five. Go to the library, bookstore or the internet and get yourself a copy now. You won't be disappointed.