audio fiction (8.5 hrs) - Australian woman with extreme empathetic synesthesia (mentally experiencing the injuries and emotions of the people and animals that she sees, even if the animal is already dead) brings her (traumatized) twin sister to the Scottish Highlands where she works to reintroduce wolves into the wild (making enemies of the farmers and people who live there--one of whose murdered body she discovers one night in the snow), and flashes back to time spent with her sister, growing up with their dad in the vanishing forests of British Columbia, Canada and her sister's marriage to a truly horrible man.

CW/TW: domestic abuse, sexual assault, violence, murder, animal cruelty, depression/agoraphobia and PTSD/other mental health issues.

riveting and atmospheric narration with various and lovely accents -- I found that I needed to take short breaks when the story got intense, but at the same time was eager to get back to it.. ( )

This is one that made me cry. There are some heavy topics included that I wasn’t really expecting. It is beautifully written and atmospheric and I loved the themes it centered around. I ended up reading it very quickly!

The whole endeavor of bringing wolves back into an ecosystem they have been erased from to bring a balance back and bring the trees, plants, and other creatures back, is so cool and something I had never given thought to before. But of course, this book isn’t just about the wolves and the ecosystem, It’s about the people and how we are the ones that can break and hurt each other in ways that an animal never could. The people of the village are worried about the predatory wolves coming after their livestock, way of life, their children, and themselves. But the main character of this book will stop at nothing to prove the innocence of her wolves and to instead turn the townspeople’s eyes inward on their relationships between each other after a person goes missing and everyone seems to believe it was her wolves.

A very raw, emotional story that will stay with me. ( )

Which is more the wild beast, the wolf or the human? Which is more compassionate? Charlotte McConaghy makes you ponder such questions in her terrific second novel “Once There Were Wolves” (2021).

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland on a mission to reintroduce wolves to the Highlands. With her is her twin sister Aggie, once vibrant but now silent and withdrawn after an abusive marriage. Farmers worry about the wolves preying on their livestock, while Inti tries to convince them the wolves prefer natural game.

When Inti discovers the bloody corpse of a man she has openly confronted because he beat his wife, a reminder to her of Aggie's husband, she hastily buries it, fearing her wolves will be blamed. But then she becomes a suspect in the man's disappearance, while she herself fears the murderer could be Duncan, the local police chief and also her lover and the father of the child she carries.

Adding to the complications, Inti suffers from mirror-touch synesthesia, a rare condition causing her to experience what those around her experience. If someone else is struck, she feels the blow. (This is a real condition, experienced by the novelist Siri Hustvedt, among others.)

McConaghy masterfully juggles all this and more, while giving her readers a bit of mirror-touch synesthesia that allows us to feel what her characters, especially Inti, are feeling. And then she shows us that wolves may experience this empathy, as well. ( )

In Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy, Inti moved to the Scottish Highlands as part of a team trying to reintroduce wolves into the environment. She knew it would not be easy, but she believes in the project, and she needed to get her twin sister Aggie away from their previous life in Alaska. Part environmental novel, part mystery with a little romance thrown in, Once There Were Wolves wrestles with a bit of an identity crisis, and it shows at times. I really liked aspects of the story including Inti’s character development and the story of the wolves, but the romance felt forced and the end was disappointing. Overall, readers looking for an interesting environmental novel — especially about wolves — will enjoy this novel. ( )

This book made me angry. The title may be "Once There Were Wolves", but the story of re-introducing wolves into a remote area of Scotland is only a part of the book. It is about climate change and our destruction of the planet, mistrust of science and scientists, rape, physical and emotional abuse of women, revenge, mental health issues, and much more, with a murder mystery thrown in as well. It is a story filled with violence. I'm not sure that I liked any of the characters, even the narrator. But the book made me think. Yes, the book made me angry, but maybe that is a good thing. ( )