Is your love language, "extremely detailed threats of violence that your loved ones roll their eyes at because they know your tough guy demeanor is just a facade and you're really a softie at heart"? Then boy do I have a protagonist for you!

So this is the second entry in a series and it cannot hold up as a standalone, but that's not really a mark against it as much as a warning; coming into this one blind would be very confusing. In the previous book, four characters leave their family behind for a multi-year hiatus on an (ultimately unsuccessful) quest for revenge that causes more problems than it solves. This book follows one of those characters and we finally get to see what happened during that time away, at least for the first third of this book. This was my favorite part, mostly because we get to see the dynamic of what's basically three brothers + a guy their recently deceased father (spoiler for book one!) sorta kinda knew try to stay strong for each other through a difficult situation and ultimately bond over a collective failure.

Then we jump back to the "present" and the overall plot through-line continues where the first book left off. But I thought it was interesting that the inciting incident for the main conflict of this book doesn't even occur until almost the halfway point, and that I didn't mind.

In between all the larger-scale drama (who knew nation-wide werewolf politics could be so complicated and cutthroat?) that drives the lion's share of the dramatic action there's a subplot of two men who were almost lovers once, but circumstances tore them apart decades ago, causing a wound that just would not heal. I appreciated seeing two unequivocally mature gay men with tons of (justified!) drama between them butt heads and cut each other with surgically-precise insults you could only make when you know each other this well.

I wish we had spent more time with these two, but the book suffered for having such a large cast and the constant background chatter from minor characters acted as a sort of comic relief valve when things got too heavy. I would've preferred the angst to just be poured on even thicker without the tonal peaks and valleys. And while I get that a central theme of this series as a whole seems to be Found Family, there were plenty of times when the schmaltz go too much even for me.

Still, I probably will continue with this series; for all the faults and issues I can point to, I am still finding myself entertained.