Raised by Wolves, Volume 1 (Raised by Wolves)

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Melissa Marr Reviews Raised by Wolves

Melissa Marr is the author of the bestselling Wicked Lovely series: Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange, Fragile Eternity, and Radiant Shadows. Read her review of Raised by Wolves:

In Raised by Wolves, Jennifer Lynn Barnes uses her real world knowledge of pack behavior as the basis of an action-packed, intense, romantic story.

Real wolves are pack animals: hierarchy and dominance matter. Whereas most of us have no access to untamed pack mammals, Jennifer is an exception. In her Ph.D. work at Yale in medical science and psychiatry, she journeys regularly to Cayo Santiago, an island populated solely by more than 1000 free ranging rhesus macaques to study their behavior.

Like wolves, rhesus monkeys are smart, potentially aggressive animals with a hierarchical structure within their troops. Like wolves, they can be both very beautiful and very dangerous. (Their fangs are the size of your pinkie finger.) On these research trips, Barnes and several other researchers co-exist with at least five troops of monkeys with their own hierarchies and territories. As such, Barnes has been a human living among pack animals who are stronger, who use non-verbal communication, who function on instinct rather than logic. She is, in essence, a young woman who has had to learn some of the same lessons as her protagonist, Bryn.

In Raised by Wolves, Bryn is a young woman who faces challenges every day as a human surrounded by male-dominated werewolves. She was taken under the care of the Pack Alpha, Callum, after her family was killed in front of her when she was a small child. Callum’s affection and over-protectiveness are both invaluable and stifling. Her life is teetering on that line between cherished and smothered, and while she logically understands the rules, her instinct is not to follow. She is a natural leader who is fiercely loyal, passionate, courageous, and willing to test the rules.

And testing the rules is exactly what Bryn must do when she finds out that the pack--her pack, her family--has been holding a prisoner: irresistible newly made teen werewolf, Chase. As Bryn risks everything with and for Chase, she finds her life in danger from those she thought she could trust, strangers from her past, and her own actions.

Despite the intense connection Chase and Bryn have, this isn’t only a romance. Bryn--with the help of Chase, Devon, and Lake (a very awesome female werewolf)--engages in a conflict that challenges Pack order. As is inevitable in such situations, there are consequences, injuries, and loss. The mature sensibility in both the chemistry between characters and the action-driven plot make this book a crossover for adult paranormal readers, especially fans of adult books by Rachel Vincent, Patricia Briggs, and Kelley Armstrong.

Jennifer has taken her experience with pack behavior and added a love of strong heroines (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and her strong sense of romance. The result is a story that Raised by Wolves is, quite simply, the most compelling YA werewolf book out there.