Beth Lewis (1)

An Alternative History set sometime in (probably) the twentieth century; after the Great Stupid and the Second. It feels like it’s set in Canada, where Elka was left with her Nana when her parents went North to find gold.
Nana doesn’t come home from town one night. Elka is found and “adopted” by a man who is a criminal. What choices does Elka have and what chance does she have to do the right thing, if the right thing is anything but merely surviving.
A terrifying story about survival and friendship.… (meer)

The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis is a dystopian coming-of-age story that has elements of both horror and mystery. Elka has considered the Trapper as her father since he found her in the woods when she was seven and has looked after her ever since. When she learns from the righteous, cold-eyed magistrate, Jennifer Lyons, that he is in fact, a monster, a serial killer, who has been training her to follow in his footsteps she leaves and heads north to see if she can find her original family.

While part of me enjoyed this caricature of the Old West, there was another part of me that found the characters a little too cartoon like, the language a little too stilted and the story while full of action and adventure pretty unbelievable. While Elka travels through the ravaged north country, the Trapper is barely one step behind her is he tracking her to save her or to kill her?

I was intrigued by the setting as it obviously was British Columbia and parts of the Yukon, but unfortunately this easy to read story although dark and raw just wasn’t quite as original as I would have hoped.… (meer)

CW: Kidnapping and sale of girls for prostitution, attempted rape, cannibalism, scalping and killing of people, descriptions of killing and skinning of animals, death of parents.

Whilst the book hasn’t made it on to my favourites shelf, Elka has made it to my favourite female characters list *hurriedly creates new tag*. I loved her uniquely rough yet vulnerable voice. The western post-apocalyptic setting wasn’t overly described but this was probably good, as anything that could have potentially detracted us from the hunter/hunted storyline would have ruined the book in my opinion. Whilst there were no massively nail biting scenes, the underlying tension that was present throughout the whole novel left me feeling a bit wrung out by the end. There was no big revelation for us as there was enough foreshadowing for Readers to expect what was coming. All that was left for us was to sit on the edge of our seats waiting to see how Elka would respond to these horrific truths. If you loved Elka as a character then I would suggest reading The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell. I loved Temple so much and Elka reminds me a lot of her.… (meer)