Book Review: Wild by Naomi Clark

Title: Wild (Vargulf #1)
Author: Naomi Clark










The premise of this book is rather unique. While I'm sure I'd find books about werewolves & drug addictions if I looked hard, this is new territory that makes a lot of sense when you think about it. How many times have various different authors described their hero(ine) reacting to their lupine urges in a way you'd expect a drug addict to react to their body clamoring for drugs? Mixing the two together makes a lot of sense, to be honest.

Lizzie Creighton ran away from her life a year ago, wanting to escape the pressures of university and just party. And that’s exactly what she did.

But now she's sick of the world she's fallen into – the drink, the drugs, the violence – and she's desperate to start again. The chance to do it comes from the last source she could ever imagine. After her deadbeat boyfriend steals her car and abandons her in the dead of night, Lizzie is bitten by a wolf. And suddenly her next fix is her last problem.

Now, caught between Nick Doyle, the outcast werewolf who claims he can save her, and Seth Weaver, the favourite son of the blue-blood werewolf royalty, Lizzie must decide what kind of werewolf she wants to be.

As shown above, I obviously loved the idea of a drug addict becoming a werewolf because of all the implications. If/when she went off the drugs, would the higher metabolism leave her without the urges or would they be that much stronger? Would it impact her wolfy behaviors? There's just so much possibility here that Clark could do just about anything she wanted & it works very well in this book. Lizzie is a very flawed character. She is selfish, but then that's to be expected from a drug addict & to be honest, I don't think that a selfless behavior would really be realistic here. I'm very glad that we didn't get a souped up Sue-ish character here- it made me that much joyous over Lizzie's triumphs & sad over her failures.

There's a lot that isn't said in this first book, which got to be a little frustrating at times. Without trying to spoil things, I doubt that anyone is what they really seem to be in this book & I can't wait for the next book to find out if my suspicions are a little correct. (After all, Nick's claims can't be entirely baseless, right?) I also want to see if Lizzie will have more after effects from the drugs as she's just starting off on a whole new path now.

This really was a joy to read & Clark has a very clever story brewing here. It's not quite perfect, but it's darn close & I can't help but think that this could be the start of a whole new trend of werewolf fiction. This isn't your normal werewolf story & that's what makes it so good.

4 out of 5 stars

(Reader copy provided by author)