A review by iris_ymra
Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

4.0

'...being completely afraid, body and soul, was probably enough to make a person strange forever after.'

'It's important to look at how everything ended and not just what happened along the way.'

'Our old barn taught me one of the most important lessons I was ever to learn: that the extraordinary can live in the simplest things.'

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There was a family, a strange recluse loner, and eventually a girl who was incorrigible. Life could oddly go by peacefully until one person decided that they could not stand people to live a happy life and decided to become a straight up bully.

This happened in between the two world wars, but this is not a story about it in itself. Yet perhaps, we could still call it one if we are to consider having to fight for the truth and stand for someone to save them as war, certainly a battle.

And somehow the inevitable always happens; in war, one way or another people will fall down on the battlefield.

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The book was a smooth, clean storytelling, that's neither fast nor slow paced. Told in the first POV of Annabelle. The conflict created in pleasant progress that puts a little suspense and pulled out the curiosity throughout my reading, can't help my self but guessing the entire time, and hoping too for the best for the characters.

Speaking of characters, I've decided that Betty is utterly psychopathic -- to the very end -- though I don't know what would have made such young girl turned to be like what she was. And I love how smart Annabelle for her age, and her family has definitely warm bonding between them except for Aunt Lily. And lastly Toby, man I would have liked to know more of his story -- but for real, war story isn't one that we would ever be ready to hear of any time.

The one thing I learned from this book is when I have children of my own I would certainly teach them to be kind and to always stand for themselves and for others too; be brave, be courageous. And of whatever made Betty herself I know the reason was all recoverable -- because kids aren't made up the way they are naturally but nurtured to be what they become. And I finished reading this book with a pierce in my heart, I didn't cry, but it hurts all the same.