Wolfpack

This entire book is written in verse, which I wish I'd known going in, so it's a lot shorter than it appears.

I wouldn't say I disliked the book, but it didn't really live up to my expectations. I thought, since it was about a cult, we would really dive into the cult itself, the belief system, how the hierarchy works, but things just got skimmed over. Honestly, it kind of feels like everything got skimmed over in this book. Nothing really got the depth or development I felt like it deserved. Not even the relationship between the girls, which was the main focus of the book, got the development it should have.

It also says in the description that the plot focuses on the paranoia that emerges when Rose goes missing is a big part of the book, when in reality it only comes in at the very end. They suspect people outside of their group until the last couple of chapters, where the paranoia turns inward. I had hoped the book would spend more time on that, would show the girls turning on each other and suspecting each other and how it would break down the bonds between them, but it didn't. Olenna was accused and punished within like five minutes, and her reason for killing Rose was a bit lackluster. I was hoping for something more complicated and compelling than “she broke the cult's rules”, especially since we didn't get any real development for why Olenna was so devoted to Havenwood other than a few comments about how she was the one who always followed the rules the most between them.

Overall, this wasn't a bad book but I just expected more from it.

2.5