Title: Once Upon a Wolf
Author: Hurri Cosmo
Genre: Parnaormal, Historical
LGBTQ+ Category: MM Gay
Publisher: Painted Hearts Publishing
Pages: 113
Reviewer: Scott
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About The Book
Hawk is alone, hiding from the world, living in a tiny, rickety cabin his grandfather built. He has few supplies and fewer yet of the skills needed to survive on his own, but because of what he did, because of what his father caused him to do… well, there’s just no other choice. But then one day “Ghost” shows up. A large black lone wolf who begins to “take care of” Hawk. He brings him game, he protects him from predators, and he even pulls him from a raging river. He is Hawk’s only friend and Hawk begins to talk to ghost as if he is human and can understand.
Except Ghost isn’t human.
Ghost has filled a void in Hawk’s life, and he is very grateful, but he is a wolf and Hawk needs the company of a human. In fact, Hawk is desperately lonely, to the point he even tells Ghost he longs for the touch of a man, the first time he has ever said such a wicked thing out loud.
Then one full-moon night, a large, beautiful, naked man breaks into the cabin. At first Hawk is terrified, until he realizes the stranger has Ghost’s amazing golden eyes..
The Review
I don’t read a lot of paranormal, but something told me to take a chance on Hurri Cosmo’s latest book, “Once Upon a Wolf.” It has a great cover, for one thing, and I’ve always adored both Hurri and her awesome author name.
I’m glad I did.
The book tells the tale of a wolf shifter and his human mate. You don’t get any hand-holding here. Hurri plunges you right into the story, so much so that it took me a bit to figure out the historical context, but that’s just a quibble.
I love being immersed in a world and figuring out the parameters as I go. In this case, most of the action takes place in the late 1800’s. It’s centered on a backwoods cabin where our hero, the lanky, lonely Hawk who has forsaken the rest of his kind has gone to live by himself. A chance meeting with a wolf in the woods sets the stage for everything that follows.
Hurri has a gift for character, which is especially evident in Ghost, the wolf who is more than he appears. I loved the initial descriptions of how he moved, he acted and responded in his wolf form. It felt very true and real to me, and put me right into the woods alongside Hawk. No, nothing happened between us… I AM happily married, after all.
And the slow burn here is also done very well (but don’t worry – those among you who adore a hot dom/sub sex scene will be richly rewarded before the end, several sticky times).
Ghost retains his wolf character even as he starts to figure out his human side, and that transitional aspect was also handled very well.
Things come to a head when an old nemesis reappears in Hawk’s life, causing chaos and leading to the climactic moments of the story. I loved how it played out. To Hurri’s credit, I didn’t see a few of the twists coming, and I enjoyed how she sidesteps some of the typical plot paths in favor of something different from her characters.
The way things end up between the two of them, and the way local society handles things, is probably not historically accurate. But hey, we are talking wolf-shifter here, and it made me happy to dream of a better world than the one we live in now.
I loved “Once Upon a Wolf,” and hope Hurri will take us back into this world soon.
The Reviewer
Scott is the founder of Queer Sci Fi, and a fantasy and sci fi writer in his own right, with more than 30 published short stories, novellas and novels to his credit, including two trilogies.