Book Review | A Sea of Wolves by Sarah Street

Hello my lovely readers. It’s been a while and I’m catching up on some overdue reviews from the Summer. Ooops. Today I’m really excited to be reviewing my most anticipated read this year. This was my holiday read and it was the perfect story to read by the sea. So lets get straight onto the review…

A Sea of Wolves by Sarah Street
Published by Hachette Children's Group on June 20, 2024
Genres: Fantasy, Fantasy & Magic, LGBTQ+
Amazon | Waterstones
Goodreads

Pirates are tearing Mersey's seaside city apart like wolves.A fifty-year-old treaty lies in tatters, and Mersey wants nothing more than to live her life at sea, to make those pirates pay and keep her people safe, but a promise to her beloved grandmother ties Mersey to the forests and a future that doesn't feel like her own. Afraid she'll never get to be captain if she stays, Mersey sets out to free her city - and herself - from the hounds of the Heartless King.When a reckless plan fails, Mersey finds herself caught up in the world's most notorious pirate crew, and the arms of its cold-blooded first mate. These pirates are determined to take Mersey's city for themselves, leaving her caught in the beginnings of a war; one she knows will have disastrous consequences for the people she loves, but just might be the thing to set her free.Amid lies, betrayal, and a blossoming love for someone she is supposed to want dead, Mersey finds herself torn between two lives, each as steeped in red as the other.

A Sea of Wolves is one of my anticipated reads this year and it didn’t disappoint. After devouring A Curse of Salt last year and naming it one of my favourite reads of 2023. I met Sarah last year as well at YALC completely fangirling and I honestly just love her books and the world she creates. If you know me you are know that I am a huge fan of books set at sea and Sarah combines that and classic fairytales to create an epic YA Sapphic fantasy novel.

A young pirate hunter, set on raging across the seas to defeat the cunning wolf to protect her grandmother’s town. To save the people from being A Sea of Wolves is a Red Riding retelling set at sea, whilst this is not part of a series it is set in the world before A Curse of Salt, which took me a couple of chapters to realise this. We are still in the incredible world and curse of the Heartless King remaking havoc on a local harbour town of Bray. The 50 year old treaty between land and sea broke and the Heartless King is to blame for it or so we thought. Mersey has felt the repercussions of this treaty. She belongs at sea, graves it just like her Pa. But her grandmother has stopped her, she wants her to lead Bray, the company that she has built over the island. But Mersey wants to find the Heartless King, to bring justice to the countless sunken ships brutally ripped about or lives lost to the sea.

Sarah Street creates badass MCs. I think that another reason why I love her books so much. Mersey is a character not to be messed with. She’s full of angst, strong, determined, relentless and never gives up. She fierce and distinctive and such memoriable character and I love that. Then she meets Goldie and its sapphic enemies-to-lovers that will split the sea. They were dynamite together, complete at each others throats, the common phrase keep your friends closes and your enemies closer and that was Mersey and Goldie. Their relationship, their connection throughout the book was fraught and electric and I especially loved the alternate POVs between them.

What I loved was the nostalgic feeling when we meet Aron, Goldie and Sebastian, the Heartless King, our beast. We see a slightly different side to them that really add to their character we’ve got to know. Living with the curse for 2 and half centuries is incredibly lonely and exhausting, all that emotion especially like Goldie, who holds a lot of that in. She has no real ease unless she is fighting with her knives. Sarah doens’t shy away from a brutal retelling, it’s no sunshine and rainbows and that what I love about her writing. It’s bloody, it’s cruel and it’s emotional. This fresh and innovative storytelling that she writhes with classic fairytales and pirates is phenomenal and is the one setting that I completely escape too.

A Sea of Wolves is a brutal, fresh, and angsty imaginative retelling of Red Riding Hood. I loved returning to the world of the Heartless King in a whole new chapter. If you loved A Cursed of Salt then you will love this.

Thank you to Team Bkmrk for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.