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White Wolf
If I’m not a human, who am I?
When Nathan Walker begins his first year at Mist Valley University, he hardly expects to encounter a stranger who claims to be his brother — much less a brother who died years ago. And as if a resurrected brother wouldn’t be enough, Nathan soon finds himself investigating murders that are connected to his family’s dark history.
Nathan doesn’t believe in love. And perhaps he shouldn’t. But when more strangers arrive in Mist Valley, one thing is To stay alive, Nathan needs to believe in werewolves.
Well-known for its unexpected twists, Jay Argent’s entertaining storytelling takes readers on a fantasy ride that they will never want to end.
When Nathan Walker begins his first year at Mist Valley University, he hardly expects to encounter a stranger who claims to be his brother — much less a brother who died years ago. And as if a resurrected brother wouldn’t be enough, Nathan soon finds himself investigating murders that are connected to his family’s dark history.
Nathan doesn’t believe in love. And perhaps he shouldn’t. But when more strangers arrive in Mist Valley, one thing is To stay alive, Nathan needs to believe in werewolves.
Well-known for its unexpected twists, Jay Argent’s entertaining storytelling takes readers on a fantasy ride that they will never want to end.
310 pages, Paperback
Published June 18, 2023
About the author
Jay Argent
25 books123 followersJay Argent is a novelist in his forties who lives a peaceful life with his husband. His favorite hobbies are music, movies, and romantic novels. He obtained a degree in engineering in 2001 and started his career in a management consulting firm. Right now, he is pursuing his true passion of writing.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 16, 2024
Yellow eyes. Red eyes. White eyes. White witch?
Nathan and Jeremy discover the chaos of confused family, mixed relationships, rape, pregnancy, who is dead or alive, friend or foe, FBI or Black magic, deadly dagger, silver bullets and arrows, secret places, vaults, talismans, and Yasman.
Jaz, Ryder, and priests, guards, and the history of werewolves. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but tried three times and could not find India because the maps weren't true. So why Mist Valley?
Nathan and Jeremy discover the chaos of confused family, mixed relationships, rape, pregnancy, who is dead or alive, friend or foe, FBI or Black magic, deadly dagger, silver bullets and arrows, secret places, vaults, talismans, and Yasman.
Jaz, Ryder, and priests, guards, and the history of werewolves. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but tried three times and could not find India because the maps weren't true. So why Mist Valley?
March 3, 2026
This is, decisively, the worst book I’ve ever read. It’s jaw-droppingly horrible. The writing is atrocious, the dialogue and characterization hopelessly disjointed. In the first 50 or so pages, I made some notes (included below) on the writing - not knowing just how terrible the book would get. It’s an ad hoc spitballing of Frankensteined tropes and behaviors totally lacking in coherence.
It’s not just that the writing is unintelligent (but it is mind-bogglingly stupid). It’s that the author has no insight into what they are doing. There’s no craft and no awareness that craft is lacking.
As astonishingly bad as this book is, it’s also astonishing that someone who writes this horribly also has the tenacity to finish a 300+ page book. But perhaps this isn’t a problem for someone who doesn’t realize how bad they are.
These are my initial notes, before I gave up keeping track of the book’s shortcomings:
I’ve seen a number of Jay Argent books advertised on Amazon, and I foolishly assumed he was probably a decent writer. What I didn’t expect was the dreary monotone of his writing. At one point Argent describes a professor’s lectures as “dreary ramblings.” That’s an apt description of Argent’s writing style.
Here’s an example of the dreary monotone:
"His hands took a firm hold on my legs, and he stood up like I didn’t weigh a thing. Darn, he was strong."
At this point, both Nathan and Jeremy have been attacked and are bleeding from puncture wounds.. Jeremy’s leg is bleeding out - but the words Argent puts into his POV character is, “Darn, he was strong.”
Argent also clutters his sentences with unnecessary detail. After being attacked, Nathan and Jeremy are outside the campus medical clinic (waiting on the sidewalk, as if there wouldn’t be a 24 hour triage on duty). The author writes:
"Like everything else on campus, the stairs were gray stone. They felt hard against my skinny ass, but the geometrically precise cut grass had too much dew to be sitting there, with my legs too weak to stand."
Just how does the dew and the geometrically precise cut grass connect to the fact that the boys are bleeding and one can’t stand? By this point, just a few pages into the book, the author has also droned on and on about the university’s gray stone buildings (at one point the grayness is underscored as being “graphite.” Clearly this is importantly to the author, but is it important for a reader?). So how does all of this help a reader experience the fact that his characters have just been viciously attacked? Argent has dulled the emotional intensity of the scene through unnecessary, prattling detail - giving it its monotone quality.
Similarly, his paragraphs are blurred and unfocused. I don’t have the patience to provide an analysis of them. Suffice it to say that in four sentences (page 66) we go from a 15th century cardinal to the Catholic office of carmerlengo not being filled for 500 years to the Catholic Church probably not murdering Nathan’s father (which Nathan just found out about) to how many firearms Americans own. It’s a case of narrative whiplash, and it doesn’t help the story.
Argent’s characters are strangely hollow - accumulations of actions cribbed from familiar set pieces without an inner psychology to make the actions gel.
And then there are the strange, inconsistent plot points. Nathan’s childhood was spent going from one foster home to another, but he has a grandfather who cares enough to get him into a university and who wants to protect him. As a college professor, the grandfather would have had sufficient income to support Nathan as a child - so what is this BS about Nathan being in the foster care system? It simply doesn’t make sense. The story lacks internal logic.
The bottom line: don’t waste your time on this book.
It’s not just that the writing is unintelligent (but it is mind-bogglingly stupid). It’s that the author has no insight into what they are doing. There’s no craft and no awareness that craft is lacking.
As astonishingly bad as this book is, it’s also astonishing that someone who writes this horribly also has the tenacity to finish a 300+ page book. But perhaps this isn’t a problem for someone who doesn’t realize how bad they are.
These are my initial notes, before I gave up keeping track of the book’s shortcomings:
I’ve seen a number of Jay Argent books advertised on Amazon, and I foolishly assumed he was probably a decent writer. What I didn’t expect was the dreary monotone of his writing. At one point Argent describes a professor’s lectures as “dreary ramblings.” That’s an apt description of Argent’s writing style.
Here’s an example of the dreary monotone:
"His hands took a firm hold on my legs, and he stood up like I didn’t weigh a thing. Darn, he was strong."
At this point, both Nathan and Jeremy have been attacked and are bleeding from puncture wounds.. Jeremy’s leg is bleeding out - but the words Argent puts into his POV character is, “Darn, he was strong.”
Argent also clutters his sentences with unnecessary detail. After being attacked, Nathan and Jeremy are outside the campus medical clinic (waiting on the sidewalk, as if there wouldn’t be a 24 hour triage on duty). The author writes:
"Like everything else on campus, the stairs were gray stone. They felt hard against my skinny ass, but the geometrically precise cut grass had too much dew to be sitting there, with my legs too weak to stand."
Just how does the dew and the geometrically precise cut grass connect to the fact that the boys are bleeding and one can’t stand? By this point, just a few pages into the book, the author has also droned on and on about the university’s gray stone buildings (at one point the grayness is underscored as being “graphite.” Clearly this is importantly to the author, but is it important for a reader?). So how does all of this help a reader experience the fact that his characters have just been viciously attacked? Argent has dulled the emotional intensity of the scene through unnecessary, prattling detail - giving it its monotone quality.
Similarly, his paragraphs are blurred and unfocused. I don’t have the patience to provide an analysis of them. Suffice it to say that in four sentences (page 66) we go from a 15th century cardinal to the Catholic office of carmerlengo not being filled for 500 years to the Catholic Church probably not murdering Nathan’s father (which Nathan just found out about) to how many firearms Americans own. It’s a case of narrative whiplash, and it doesn’t help the story.
Argent’s characters are strangely hollow - accumulations of actions cribbed from familiar set pieces without an inner psychology to make the actions gel.
And then there are the strange, inconsistent plot points. Nathan’s childhood was spent going from one foster home to another, but he has a grandfather who cares enough to get him into a university and who wants to protect him. As a college professor, the grandfather would have had sufficient income to support Nathan as a child - so what is this BS about Nathan being in the foster care system? It simply doesn’t make sense. The story lacks internal logic.
The bottom line: don’t waste your time on this book.
December 12, 2023
Moderately-paced, an interesting supernatural system for this world, though it didn’t feel fully-fleshed out to me. The characters are also not dynamic enough to hold my attention into a second book and in many ways didn’t make much sense to me. I loved the setting, but for everything they went through, the events did not seem to match the emotional reactions and the foreshadowing clues were so obvious that the characters not noticing them made them appear like idiots to me and/or felt like the author’s hand guiding the plot to keep reveals in specific spots.
Would I go back in time and still read this book, knowing what I know now?
Eh. Probably not.
See below for the four criteria I use to decide whether and when to read a book
CHARACTERS: The characters weren’t the easiest to understand. I didn’t really have an ‘in’ with the main character. He makes choices that could make sense in making him flawed, but ultimately don’t help when he doesn’t have much redeeming him. None of them seem to react appropriately to large events that occur, which left a disconnect in the book that kept me from sinking fully into it. And because the characters somehow don’t know anything about the supernatural world, it leaves the plot feeling a bit like stumbling around in the dark.
PLOT: Evenly-paced, but with events that don’t really make sense with the characters. It felt as though the plot was ‘plotted’ and everything was squished in and made to fit, but the reveals weren’t reveals and because the characters interacted so weirdly with the events, nothing felt truly realistic and believable.
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY: There is no good/bad here. Sometimes I just want a low-investment entertainment read whereas other times a high-stakes 'I need a therapist to recover' is what I need.
0 out of 5, low. There wasn’t an in into any of the characters and none of them were dynamic enough to truly be invested emotionally in this story.
CATHARTIC FULFILLMENT: Is the emotional journey worth it? Do I finish this book feeling that I've crested the wave of the climactic moment and everything has been settled, leaving me settled and fulfilled?
50%. Eh. It’s the first in a series and it left a pretty large hanging piece unanswered between the two main characters, but I wasn’t invested enough to be frustrated. It just ended.
Would I go back in time and still read this book, knowing what I know now?
Eh. Probably not.
See below for the four criteria I use to decide whether and when to read a book
CHARACTERS: The characters weren’t the easiest to understand. I didn’t really have an ‘in’ with the main character. He makes choices that could make sense in making him flawed, but ultimately don’t help when he doesn’t have much redeeming him. None of them seem to react appropriately to large events that occur, which left a disconnect in the book that kept me from sinking fully into it. And because the characters somehow don’t know anything about the supernatural world, it leaves the plot feeling a bit like stumbling around in the dark.
PLOT: Evenly-paced, but with events that don’t really make sense with the characters. It felt as though the plot was ‘plotted’ and everything was squished in and made to fit, but the reveals weren’t reveals and because the characters interacted so weirdly with the events, nothing felt truly realistic and believable.
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY: There is no good/bad here. Sometimes I just want a low-investment entertainment read whereas other times a high-stakes 'I need a therapist to recover' is what I need.
0 out of 5, low. There wasn’t an in into any of the characters and none of them were dynamic enough to truly be invested emotionally in this story.
CATHARTIC FULFILLMENT: Is the emotional journey worth it? Do I finish this book feeling that I've crested the wave of the climactic moment and everything has been settled, leaving me settled and fulfilled?
50%. Eh. It’s the first in a series and it left a pretty large hanging piece unanswered between the two main characters, but I wasn’t invested enough to be frustrated. It just ended.
August 25, 2023
The premise is great. This has a lot of potential to be a great story. There are a lot of grammatical errors that kept slowing the story down. These are mostly due to missing words in a sentence. I’m not sure if the author has an editor but, someone needs to go through and clean it up. I loved the roommate. He was a great character. The main character spent much of the book complaining about how the people in his life had lied to him but, he does the same thing to those he claims are friends. The book just ends leaving the reader with a lot of questions. There’s no indication that there will be a sequel so, I guess we just live with the unanswered questions.
September 26, 2023
This book needed a strong editor and/or proofreader
This could have been a great start to a series, instead of just a somewhat okay read.
The book is full of a LOT of grammatical errors and misspelled words (breaks instead of brakes, etc).
As another reviewer wrote, the main character runs from one place (and idea) to another, without actually getting anywhere, which was very frustrating to read.
The writing came off as being juvenile, as how a middle school student might see adult relationships.
This was not a cohesive novel, but could have been a really great start to a series (the premise of the book was good), with a strong editor or proofreader.
This could have been a great start to a series, instead of just a somewhat okay read.
The book is full of a LOT of grammatical errors and misspelled words (breaks instead of brakes, etc).
As another reviewer wrote, the main character runs from one place (and idea) to another, without actually getting anywhere, which was very frustrating to read.
The writing came off as being juvenile, as how a middle school student might see adult relationships.
This was not a cohesive novel, but could have been a really great start to a series (the premise of the book was good), with a strong editor or proofreader.
November 16, 2023
This book lacked subtly, the exposition and the plot details were revealed in a super heavy handed way. There weren't any twists because the story was extra formulaic and the events unfolded predictably. Also, Nathan, the main character, was extremely unlikable with his bursts of immaturity and cruelty throughout the book.
The first third to a half of the book wasn't bad, but steadily went downhill and was a chore to finish. I also kept feeling whiplash because the more backstory the author revealed, the less I understood because the new information contradicted the earlier information in extremely confusing ways.
The first third to a half of the book wasn't bad, but steadily went downhill and was a chore to finish. I also kept feeling whiplash because the more backstory the author revealed, the less I understood because the new information contradicted the earlier information in extremely confusing ways.
July 6, 2023
It was interesting with many plots. I kept reading just to find out what was happening. The main character I truly thought was cute, and like so many times in my own life, the girl got the guy I also wanted. I hate falling for the straight guy, but what the he'll It's only a book!! I guess I truly got too involved with the characters. Which for a book that is a good thing! I have read a few books by Argent and find them fun and entertaining. His books are a good break from all the heavy books I also enjoy reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2023
Werewolf murder mystery whodunnit barely comes close.
There’s so much going on, it’s hard to keep up. Nathan has his entire world upturned, he’s been lied to about anyone important in his life, his non existent love life looks like it’s never going to improve, and it looks like he’s not going to get a HEA anytime soon. Mysterious organisations fighting each other in total secrecy, werewolves that can talk, a plot that starts in the time of Christopher Columbus, for the first book in a series, this packs a lot in. Ending on a cliffhanger, I have no clue what’s next!
There’s so much going on, it’s hard to keep up. Nathan has his entire world upturned, he’s been lied to about anyone important in his life, his non existent love life looks like it’s never going to improve, and it looks like he’s not going to get a HEA anytime soon. Mysterious organisations fighting each other in total secrecy, werewolves that can talk, a plot that starts in the time of Christopher Columbus, for the first book in a series, this packs a lot in. Ending on a cliffhanger, I have no clue what’s next!
July 18, 2025
A whole lot of nonsense
Where oh where do I begin? This reads like a first year high school student’s beginning creative writing class assignment. According to Amazon, this “author” is known for twists and turns in his story writing. I think it’s better to say he hasn’t a clue on how to properly construct a plot. Juvenile dialogue made this painful to read; so much so that I literally exclaimed out loud “Oh my god, this is so freaking bad!” at one point. Hire a qualified editor, Mr. Argent.
Where oh where do I begin? This reads like a first year high school student’s beginning creative writing class assignment. According to Amazon, this “author” is known for twists and turns in his story writing. I think it’s better to say he hasn’t a clue on how to properly construct a plot. Juvenile dialogue made this painful to read; so much so that I literally exclaimed out loud “Oh my god, this is so freaking bad!” at one point. Hire a qualified editor, Mr. Argent.
July 25, 2024
Wolf
This is a new take on werewolves for and I have to admit it is good. Nathan’s first year of college starts off like a normal freshman year. But his brother show up. His brother has been dead for several years. Then he and his roommate are bitten by this creature and they become werewolves. They don’t believe it at first. Then they have to stop an evil group from destroying all werewolves. I enjoyed this book.
This is a new take on werewolves for and I have to admit it is good. Nathan’s first year of college starts off like a normal freshman year. But his brother show up. His brother has been dead for several years. Then he and his roommate are bitten by this creature and they become werewolves. They don’t believe it at first. Then they have to stop an evil group from destroying all werewolves. I enjoyed this book.
August 22, 2023
I really wanted to enjoy this book, but the writing was sub-par and the main character just kept forgetting important things and remembering them at just the right time. I was kind of enjoying the angst with Jeremy, but the constant interjection with Yasmin was an annoying plot device.
November 21, 2023
Meh. Wanted it to be better than it is. The tension between the straight roommate is weird. The choices at the climax, also weird. The character interplay around the "thriller" element was only okay. I give it 3 stars because it is pretty average, unremarkable but not bad by any means.
June 10, 2024
This is Book one Of White Wolf : Urban Fantasy Thriller .
This was a decent start to a new series although at first I did not realize this was an young adult Book . The characters are alright I'm looking forward to them evolving in the next book.
This was a decent start to a new series although at first I did not realize this was an young adult Book . The characters are alright I'm looking forward to them evolving in the next book.
February 14, 2024
Original
The story is good, confused sometimes but hace a lot of potential, love the idea of this book and waiting for the next
The story is good, confused sometimes but hace a lot of potential, love the idea of this book and waiting for the next
February 26, 2024
Questionable protag.
Honestly, wasn't a bad book by any means. I wondered whether the protagonist was willfully ignorant or intentionally ignorant. I plan on reading the sequel.
Honestly, wasn't a bad book by any means. I wondered whether the protagonist was willfully ignorant or intentionally ignorant. I plan on reading the sequel.
February 10, 2025
What a chaotic story.
January 15, 2025
DNF. I struggled with this all the way to 70%. It just couldn’t keep my interest.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews