*I received an audio copy of this via NetGalley. This has not influenced my review.*

This was great!

I really like those main characters who are just so normal and realistically flawed. Not perfectly imperfect in beautiful ways, but believably humanly flawed… even if they’re actually a werewolf. Even though I didn’t relate to Brian’s specific situations, I could still relate to just struggling sometimes, because life is hard! Especially when a problem gets dropped into your lap and changes your life, and you’re not given a manual or any help, you’re just supposed to figure it out. He also had a fun sort of sarcastic sense of humor. And he had a lot of the same thoughts that I was having in response to all the weird and/or problematic stuff happening around him.

Speaking of which, this was such a great queer perspective book. Toxic masculinity, having to sort of tone down his queerness in order to be palatable for straight men, the entitlement of people thinking it’s ok to ask personal questions. Those topics and other little things were included so naturally, just part of the book and the character.

But it wasn’t too serious of a book. It never got too dark or heavy. Which was a little weird when everyone was super casual about murder, but eh, I can let that go. I think it was meant to be an entertaining story with some commentary, and that is indeed what it was.

Brian’s friends, Nick and Darby, were great! That doesn’t quite do justice to how important the theme of friendship was in the book, but you’ll just have to trust me.

There was no romance, which really was for the best, Brian had enough on his plate. Seriously though, I don’t read a lot of books that don’t have romance, so it’s always refreshing to find one, especially with a queer MC.

The plot was mostly quiet and sorta calm, but interesting. It was a cool take on werewolves. Not anything wildly different from other books I’ve read, but not the alpha and pack sort of thing either. He just happened to sprout fur every full moon and have strong senses and extra strength and healing abilities, but he was still, mostly, just a person existing in the world, trying to figure life out.

The audiobook narration by Anthony Nyro was wonderful! It sounded perfectly natural, it suited the character, and it hit all the right tones of apathy, frustration, exasperation, and sass. Plus, every character sounded different enough to easily tell them apart.

Overall, this was a fairly calm but entertaining story with queer perspective and sweet friendship and a main character who was imperfectly human (and imperfectly werewolf)!

*Rating: 4 Stars // Read Date: 2023 // Format: Audiobook*