I can’t resist seeking out new werewolf series, and this was quite an original take. The author has a good imagination, and I liked her writing, but the werewolves were a just little too wolfy for me. Silver’s pack don’t consider themselves human at all, even when they’re “in skin,” which is an interesting concept, but a difficult one to be consistent with in different scenarios. Vale did a good job of sticking to her premise most of the time, but the result was kind of weird, and not my kind of weird.
I did like Silver and Tiberius. Their love story was sweet, and his letter to her towards the end of the book made my heart melt. I liked them enough that I might peek at the next book just to see if they’re in it. Their keeping Ty’s dad a secret and causing the deaths of four pack members infuriated me, though. Ty could have come clean when Silver ran off to hunt his father, and I thought continuing to cover it up didn’t make any sense
The audiobook reader was decent. She didn’t knock my socks off, but she didn’t make me want to scream either. I liked how she did Ty’s voice.
Worth a read if you like werewolves and are in the mood for something different. ( )

Nice world building. Good solid shifter read. A different set up from other shifter/werewolf stories. I liked it. ( )

4.4 I really liked this version of werewolves and shifters. It was more pack law, pack responsibilities, and sacrifices than other books I've read. No it's wasn't overdone for my taste I found it riveting how it all worked. The characters we all so well written, I adored Ti and Silver as much as the rest. When
It was funny, hard, violent, sweet, viscous, romantic, realistic-ish, intriguing. I love forward to more.
True love means you'll eat someone for them :P ( )

Maria Vale's debut novel THE LAST WOLF is an immersive tale of identity, trust, and love. It's a fresh take on the werewolf subgenre, steeped in history and tragedy. It is also wildly funny, completely endearing, and stomach-churningly violent.

The book blurb (above) does a good job with setting up the plot. Tiberius (Ti) Levereaux shows up injured at the Great North Pack's territory in the Adirondack region of upstate New York. Silver's pack works on the buddy system, with every wolf having a "shielder." Hers has just been kicked out for being several kinds of awful, which means that she's been demoted to the absolute lowest position in the pack, a wolf who serves the alpha and has no hope of a mate or change in status. A large part of the reason for this is that Silver only has use of three legs in her wolf form, meaning she can't keep up with the pack and can't effectively fight in the challenges that determine pack hierarchy. When Ti shows up, Silver chooses to leave the pack and pair with him. They then have three moon cycles to convince the pack to let them join.

Ti is a shifter, a being that can walk as human at any time, not bound to the Iron Moon. He's also half-wolf, however, and his struggle for a place to belong is central to the book's plot. Ti and Silver exchange many jokes around the idea that Ti is a "crappy wolf," while Silver is a "crappy human."

The pack functions in ways that will be familiar to paranormal romance readers, but also in many ways that I hadn't read before. For example, if a wolf in the pack kills something, s/he has to eat it. Silver ends up eating things that she'd rather not, including, at one point, the penis of a would-be rapist. When I say this book is visceral, I mean literally. There are a couple of scenes of disemboweling. It's a violent and kind of gross world, but the pack doesn't see it as violence, so the reader doesn't either. It's a holistic view of the world - if you kill something, you eat it. If you own hundreds of acres in the Adirondacks, you take the best care of the land that you can. The pack has a network of wolves living "Offland" who come home each full moon and function as lawyers and trust managers the rest of the time. They fight for conservation and against pollution, development, etc.

I loved the inversion of the common PNR trope of wild man and the woman who tames him. Ti is the more human of the two, and they each pull the other toward a midpoint between wild and civilized. It's Ti who waits on sexual contact. It's Silver who rips out throats. Their romance is unconventional but also so familiar. They don't come together in a big swell of emotion, it's a practical partnership that grows into something more. Like a wolfy marriage of convenience. It's quite lovely.

In an attempt to keep this review a reasonable length, I'm going to bullet out a few things you might want to know:

The pack has absolutely no internal racial concerns, which makes sense. They do, however, have a Human Behaviors teacher who teaches the pack about humans and how to act more like them when Offland. It felt like an obvious omission for the book not to address race at all, ever. When Ti and Silver go into town, in that super-white corner of NY? We see that Ti is very polite and careful, but it's not mentioned whether that's for *spoiler reasons* or because he's a black man in a gun-toting white town. It also seems like something that the Human Behaviors teacher should be teaching the Pack. Racism is just as likely (more?) to get them killed in the outside world as being a wolf is.
I can't speak to the quality of the disabled rep in this book. Nothing about it struck me as offensive, but I don't have mobility impairments. If I see a review that covers this better, I'll link it here.
Content warnings: violence, stillbirth, off-page attempted rape, children in peril, massacre in the beginning prologue.
Overall, I gave this book 4/5 stars. It's a really compelling debut with little clues throughout, red herrings, and a hell of a twist. The pacing was steady but I found myself wondering what the plot of the novel was at one point. Did that keep me from enjoying the heck out of it? Nope. ( )

This book is odd as hell, but it's also sweet as hell.

But, it's a little too...wolfy...for me. There's a lot of scent, blood, and pack dynamic.

And I just can't get myself there with stressful family politics in close proximity and all that jazz. I don't think I'll be continuing with the series, but if you have curiosity about a "crappy wolf" shifter and a more wild/less human version of that falling in love despite some slightly underdeveloped world building and plot, you may really enjoy this series. 2.5 ( )