While I’ve been on a nostalgia reading bender, I’ve also sought out as many new-to-me books with werewolf main characters that I can get my hands on. Today’s review covers one such book. GOOD DOGS by Brian Asman is a tale about found family, grief, accepting yourself for who you really are, and surviving an onslaught of vicious attacks from a giant forest monster. You know, the usual.

This book was a birthday present, and the gifter bought it for me literally just because it was a werewolf-centered novel. Good instincts, bestie. Without further ado, let’s jump in. In this universe, being a werewolf is a genetic condition that presents itself around puberty age. Instead of being tied to the full moon cycle, the transformation occurs for one week out of the month.

Rather than turning into four-legged hulking beasts, these wolves shift into old school, upright and two-legged, fur-covered monsters with a wolf’s head on their shoulders. Think 1941’s The Wolf Man, or Teen Wolf if that’s too deep of a cut.

Our point of view character is a werewolf named Delia. Like every other wolf we meet, she has pretty serious unprocessed trauma. In a pack of six wolves, each one has their own terrible story of how they discovered their ‘Night Selves’ as they call it, and even worse stories about how they managed their condition until they all met an older wolf named Hirsch.

In the canyons of California, Hirsch created a safe haven for them to run and be free. Well, as free as it’s possible for six werewolves to be while wearing electric dog collars inside an invisible fence. The morning after a long night of running and howling at the moon, the pack wakes to find a severed limb in their enclosure.

By the end of the day, half of the pack are on the road to relocate to an abandoned town while two of the wolves stay behind to deal with the evidence. The part of the pack that fled almost immediately runs into danger. Something deep in the woods awakens and begins to hunt the wolves.

With that established, let’s get into the critiques. This is where things get tricky. I want to say that I really like this book, and I think I do? My issue is that it’s disjointed in very important areas. The overall idea is super cool, I love the general atmosphere Asman creates. However, I can’t help feeling like it could have been structured in a way that leads the reader down the rabbit hole.

We’re told about a dangerous thing in the woods, and we even get some villain POV chapters. For me, those chapters lacked oomph. I wish we had learned about this through Delia, as she’s our main character and we read 99% of the book from her POV. I wish we had learned a lot of things as the characters learned them. Instead, by the end of the book, the readers know more about what happened than the characters do.

I also wish the lore were more established. I understand that the wolves are working with a lot of ‘unknowns’, so to speak, because it’s a relatively undiagnosed condition, and that there’s not much information about it available to them. Maybe that’s me wanting too much from the book, but until the very end, I didn’t understand their limitations. That meant the stakes Asman built didn’t feel intimidating or serious. It took away a good portion of the tension.

I wanted more, and I wanted to sink into the world, but something about the way the narrative was told kept me from being able to do that.

Let’s talk ratings.

More than half the time, the descriptions and tension hit well enough. I wasn’t as nervous or scared as I wanted to be, but I don’t think this is that kind of book. I wanted something that would raise the hairs on the back of my neck. Something that would have my brain playing a scene on repeat, but I didn’t get that. It’s more Friday the 13th than The Thing. ⭐

Asman knows how to turn a phrase. He knows how to craft characters that feel real. Ones that you find yourself caring about without realizing it. Unfortunately, in my opinion, those characters are not supported by the way the story is structured. Information comes either too early, too late, or from a POV that could have been better utilized otherwise. ⭐⭐

It’s worth the read. You may find this more exciting and thrilling than I did. From the reviews on Goodreads, many readers enjoyed it better than I did. You could very well be one of them. While this book didn’t hit for me, it very well could hit just right for you. ⭐⭐⭐