This was as close to feelgood as you can get in this universe, I think. Well, of course we have the villain of the story in this book too. And a pretty cool one at that.
But much as the title suggests this story is more centered around Holly, the squirrel woodwalker. Now, I don’t know how real squirrel’s talk, but I can well imagine they’re close to Holly’s talk pattern. Quick, fast and jumping between subjects, especially if they’re hitting too close to home!
At first one thinks Holly is the bad guy, since she’s much like squirrels, and has a tendency to just take things because in her mind it’s just for fun and not stealing. So when valuables disappear, it’s easy to think it’s Holly that takes them. But no, it’s not. Another woodwalker with a pretty cool ability is the actual thief. A woodwalker that has two animal shapes and one human shape, unlike regular woodwalkers that have one animal shape and one human shape. Really cool! I’d love to be a wolverine and a hawk if I had that ability… So cool…
Anyway, our good old bad guy Andrew Milling is still plotting in the background, I mean his hate for Carag is bordering on stalker-levels. He claims it is because Carag turned him down, but now I’m suspecting there’s something more behind it. I hope we’ll find out eventually. It just CAN’T be just being turned down that is the only reason! It just can’t!
We finally get to meet Carag’s family again (who exclusively live like mountain lions) which resolved a little bit of the issues I had with the first book. They got to talk things out a bit, which was good. Even though they might not understand or like Carag’s choice to live both as a human and an animal, a foot/paw in both worlds, they still accept him and love him. Which I thought was very sweet! I’m happy I got some resolution to that one, otherwise that would have put a damper to the entire series. I hope we get to see a little bit more of them. I liked Carag’s father, even though he is the most hardheaded of his family, he has some pretty interesting philosophies. It’s a shame he had such a bad experience with humans. Some PTSD after a human run in perhaps?
Anyway, so far these books are pretty enjoyable. Might not be high quality literature, but they’re fun, fast paced and with an interesting concept. Kiddo wants me to keep reading them for her, and I certainly don’t mind!