Charlotte McConaghy

Inti is an ecologist recently arrived in the Scottish Highlands on a project to reintroduce wolves to the area, where they had previously been hunted to extinction. Wolves will control the deer population, which will allow plant growth to return to areas that have been stripped bare, restoring habitat for other wildlife. Inti and the other members of her team are not welcomed by a group of hostile, violent local farmers who think the wolves are going to kill their sheep. Accompanying Inti is show more her twin sister Aggie, rendered mute and agoraphobic by a recent trauma, and Inti’s own baggage in the form of “mirror-touch synesthesia”, a condition which causes her to physically feel any sensation that she sees happening to others. Inti quickly develops a romantic relationship with the local sheriff, which backfires when the most aggressive of the farmers winds up dead right near Inti's house. Was it the sheriff? Was it Inti? Was it the wolves?

The wolf/ecology parts of this book are decent, but everything involving Inti is awful. I'm going to go ahead and spoil all of this book because I don't think you should read it. Inti quickly gets accidentally pregnant by the sheriff, immediately after he gives her a speech about how he doesn't want children because of his abusive parents. Inti does not tell anyone about the pregnancy, including the father, and does not make any decision about whether to keep the pregnancy or the baby. She just ignores it completely, including NOT GOING TO THE DOCTOR! She also spends the whole book very inconsistent about how she feels about killing. She can't deal with subsistence hunting with her father because of her “mirror-touch” so her solution is to CLOSE HER EYES when she shoots an animal, though later in the book she can't look at animals or people who have already been injured even if she didn't see them get injured. She reveals halfway through the book that she murdered her sister's rapist husband, which is understandable self-defense, but then freaks out when she learns that her sheriff-with-benefits might have killed his abusive father more than a decade ago. Later she reveals that she didn't kill her sister's husband because she chickened out, but she wishes she had, which makes it even weirder that she would freak out over the sheriff. Inti’s freaking out leads Aggie to believe the sheriff is hurting her and so she stabs him AND HIS DOG, just like she did to the initial farmer, it turns out. Before she finds out Aggie is doing the stabbing, Inti believes one of the wolves attacked the farmer and the sheriff and so she does the least logical thing possible: grabs a horse and a shotgun and sets out alone, 9 months pregnant, into a blizzard to find the wolf and shoot it. She gives birth alone in a forest in a blizzard, then loses her horse, yet somehow she and the baby survive and everything is fine, except for the wolf that she killed even though it didn't kill anyone, AND THE DOG IS DEAD.

Back to the wolves. All of the information about wolf reintroduction and rewilding is accurate. The specific implementation depicted here is hamfisted. Inti meets a lot of nice people: her coworkers, a local knitting club, other townies, etc. but seems to only choose to spend time with or thinking about the worst people in the world. The supposed lesson she learns in the end is that she should have “worked with” the rude drunk farmers on the rewilding project, but I think she was the one who gave them so much power by obsessing over them. They were going to hate her no matter what - she should have spent her energy on the many other locals who are reasonable. That’s the end of everything constructive I have to say about this book. I'm especially bummed because I had really been looking forward to this book.

Content warnings - this book contains, among other things: dog death, unwanted pregnancy, child abuse, rape, PTSD, intimate partner violence, and breaks with reality show less

Rowan’s boat is caught in a storm while attempting to reach Shearwater, a (fictional) island near Antarctica. The pilot drowns and Rowan washes ashore, severely injured. She is taken in by the island’s lone inhabitants, a father and three children ages 9-18, caretakers of a recently-abandoned research station. As Rowan is nursed back to health she gets the feeling the family is hiding something from her. But Rowan also has secrets of her own.

Truths are revealed in tiny fragments. show more Dominic, the father, explains they have been tasked with the final shutdown of the research station and while their communication system was destroyed and they can’t call for help, a ship is scheduled to evacuate them in due course. The island is threatened by climate breakdown and it’s clear the family would not be able to survive there. In addition to that, they are tasked with dismantling and transporting a massive seed bank that would enable species to be re-planted after devastating environmental impact.

As Rowan regains her strength she begins contributing to the shutdown operation and forms a bond with the family, especially the children. And yet, there are so many unanswered questions about the research station, as well as Rowan’s reasons for traveling to such a remote area. Trust between Rowan and the family waxes and wanes as new information both explains their current situation and raises still more questions. The novel evolves from a survival story to a suspenseful page-turner and an emotional ending I didn’t see coming and had to “process” for a day or so before writing this review. show less

I’m glad that I started the book not knowing/remembering much about it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know I’d have found it much less satisfying had I known details before I read the story.

It’s a powerful story.

Gorgeous writing.

I knew next to nothing about mirror-touch synesthesia and reading a story from the point of view of a character who has it was intriguing. I looked it up and was surprised that, even though it says it’s rare, that apparently 1.6-2.5% of the general show more population has it (maybe more for people with autism) which means most people have probably at least met someone with it and might very well know someone with it.

I did not guess the mysteries or certain things about the characters. I had one main hunch about something and that turned out not to be true. I like that this book flummoxed me. It stymied me and it was fun to be wrong, more than once.

Some of many quotes that I liked:

“…change is frightening to some…And when you open your heart to rewilding a landscape, the truth is, you’re opening your heart to rewilding yourself.”

“No one can meet your trust if you don’t offer it. “

“…and isn’t that the way of animals, to break your heart with their courage, with their love.”

(after having just given birth and looking at the baby) “I am halved and doubled at once.”

Lovely Acknowledgments section.

There are 18 discussion questions at the end of my edition and they’re good ones and I liked answering them for myself. This would make a great book club or buddy read book and the included questions are likely to be appreciated by readers reading this book with others with the intention of discussing it.

As I read I researched the Cairngorms. It seems as through reintroducing wolves is something that has been under consideration there.

This was a good book for me to read. I’ve been interested in wolves ever since I read Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat in the summer of 1976. I’ve been fascinated by twins since I was a child. I appreciated the environmental message in the story, which the author writes a bit about in the Acknowledgments section. I love reading stories that take place in Great Britain, in this case, Scotland, and the Canada and Australia parts were also my cup of tea. I enjoy reading about unconventional families and this also ticks that box. I value well written, beautifully told stories and the author accomplishes that with this book.

4-1/2 stars – debated for a while between 4 and 5 stars

I now want to read this author’s other books.

I want to add two things: 1. I felt as though I was right there. 2. It broke my heart but it was worth it. show less

This book made me angry. The title may be "Once There Were Wolves", but the story of re-introducing wolves into a remote area of Scotland is only a part of the book. It is about climate change and our destruction of the planet, mistrust of science and scientists, rape, physical and emotional abuse of women, revenge, mental health issues, and much more, with a murder mystery thrown in as well. It is a story filled with violence. I'm not sure that I liked any of the characters, even the show more narrator. But the book made me think. Yes, the book made me angry, but maybe that is a good thing. show less