Cry Wolf by S.L. Gray [ARC REVIEW]
★★★★★
5/5 stars
Release date: January 15th, 2026
Turns out that knowing pain is coming isn't always enough to save you.
IF YOU LIKE:
• Pain (anguish, suffering, angst-)
• Unreliable narration
• Heavy themes
• TOXIC and flawed characters
• “Found family” but make it hurt
• Spice that’s as devastating as it is hot
YOU’LL LOVE Cry Wolf
≪ Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever been good. If maybe there had been a version of me that didn’t need to hurt something just to feel alive. I couldn’t picture him. Maybe he never existed. ≫
HIGHLIGHTS:
• Atticus
→ Atticus is possibly the most flawed protagonist I’ve ever had the pleasure (misfortune?) to read in 1st person. His narration is acidic, ice-cold, and sharp—like a rusted saw blade. He begins as a man on the brink of self-destructive nothingness and somehow, impossibly, manages to unravel even further. He is truly, utterly, painfully broken, and I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so frustrated with a character while simultaneously begging for him to let himself be happy. It is an exercise in anguish to stay in his mind, to watch him fulfill his own prophecies without being able to help him—or shake him, or save him from the cruelty of the voice in his head.
• Shadow
→ How can a girl with so much pain have so much hope? She tries, and she tries, and she tries. We get to watch her grow from a shattered thing in an alley that lets herself get abducted into a (marginally) healthy woman who can make the tough decisions that are right for her, even when it hurts. She is messy and complicated and horribly flawed, but she is also full of hope and light, and she keeps trying to get better even when it’s hard.
• The relationship
→ It’s so toxic. It’s so broken. It’s so doomed. Atticus does actually make Shadow better, but as she gets better he gets so much worse. They shatter each other and then the inescapable gravitational pull that keeps dragging them back together manages to hold their pieces in place. The peace they manage to find is stunningly beautiful and painfully fleeting; breathless moments of almost-acceptance between two toxic people who have never been whole and don’t think they deserve good things without pain. Even knowing it’s a tragedy, the romance is written so well that you can almost let yourself hope that they’ll figure it out. They are so, SO close to being happy—you can see it, just ahead of them—and then you’re forced to watch Atticus throw himself off the path as violently as he can. It’s horrible. It’s glorious. It’s a true, terrible interpersonal tragedy and I couldn’t look away.
• The weight of addiction
→ Addiction in Cry Wolf isn’t just a plot device or a character flaw: it’s a character in and of itself. It is the true antagonist, the monster under the bed, the darkness in the corner. It clings and infects and taints, dragging Shadow back into her name and preventing Atticus from believing in peace. Cry Wolf explores toxic cycles in an unflinching and beautiful way: never assigning blame but not shying away from the damage it causes.
≪ For a moment, just one small, fucked up, suspended breath in time, we weren’t monsters. We weren’t addicts or ghosts or broken things crawling out of our own wreckage. We were just two people in a room, letting the silence breathe for us. ≫
WISHLIST:
• A second version with an alternate ending
→ I know this is a tragedy. I was emotionally prepared for it. But the selfish, romantic part of me (that could so easily see a happy ending) desperately wishes there was a secret “good” ending that I could read to ease some of the soul-breaking, hope-crushing pain that this book made me feel. If you ever want to write a hopeful alternate ending - or even a bittersweet one, I’m not overly picky - I’ll eat it up and leave no crumbs.
≪ I kissed her like she was the last good thing in the world and I didn’t deserve any of it. ≫
--
*I received an Advance Review Copy of this book from the author