Stef Penney - Tenderness of Wolves

1867, Canada.

As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a woman steels herself for the journey of a lifetime. A man has been brutally murdered and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. The violence has re-opened old wounds and inflamed deep-running tensions in the frontier township - some want to solve the crime, others seek only to exploit it.

To clear her son's name, she has no choice but to follow the tracks leaving the dead man's cabin and head north into the forest and the desolate landscape that lies beyond it...

Comment: I was eager to read this book after the promising blurb, but in the end it wasn't that special. Ok, I have to admit it's a interesting read but it shows it's a first, there's a lot of characters and some of them seem rather useless to the plot. Of course the author found something for them to matter in a certain way, but I still have the feeling things could have worked up without so many people and things in the way.

The plot developped slowly and there was a time while I was almost half through it that it got a bit boring, but then it happened: the promise of a romance. So there I went again with new eagerness. So I kept reading and each snippet of their attraction and the tension between them convinced me something would have to happen, despite the fact she's married.

Oh but the end...

The mystery in which the book is based is solved and I thought the romance part would explode lol, but alas, no it didn't. I guess the author sticked to conventions in that time. Besides, a good, well liked character dies at the end and it annoyed me, because it didn't have to.

So, I'm not completly happy with this read personally, but I admit it it's a pleasent read all in all.