Book Review - The Wolves Are Waiting (2022) by Natasha Friend
Eeshani Kharshikar
Hi SBPL,
I recently read the book The Wolves Are Waiting, by Natasha Friend, a novel about one girl’s experience with sexual assault and how it impacts her and how it implicates generations of harmful thinking and behavior within a community. I would rate this book a 5 ☆’s, because of the clear-cut way it handled such a volatile topic and the realisticness of an individual vs community response to SA. Spoilers ahead!
The book opens with one of the main characters, Nora Melchionda, waking up on the local golf course with no recollection of how she got there or anything that happened that night. Her strong-willed and sometimes overbearing best friend, Cam, urges her to go to the police so that she can be tested for a date-rape drug, but Nora refuses, wanting nothing to do with the incident, especially since her father is the Athletic Director of the college hosting the ‘Frat Fair,’ the event Nora was at. Complicating the matter even more is Adam, a fellow high schooler who partially caught the assault on camera and may have saved Nora from further harm. Through this horrific event, Nora’s life is smashed open, and she realizes that this mentality of SA and harassment towards women in her small town goes deeper and older than she ever realized. Her life divides into before and after, and she retreats into herself, while Cam and Adam work to find her assaulters made possible from incriminating photos posted online, though not with her explicit consent (hmm… a common theme?) As the story progresses, Nora learns that assault is not something that happens because of the victim, but something that can be ingrained in the minds of people for years. *MAIN SPOILER:* it is revealed that Nora is just the latest victim in a line of incidents carried out by a fraternity, in which college athletes incapacitate girls and post violating photographs of them for internet clout in a twisted sort of ‘game.’ Cam and Adam, working from the inside, find that the frat game has been carried on for decades, and in a sickening twist at the climax of the story, we find that Nora’s dad, her hero and rock throughout the years, is actually the one who started the game all those years ago. Nora’s dad has to reckon with his past and the harm he’s caused, and Nora’s mother’s and brother’s behavior suddenly begins to make sense to Nora. Finally, Cam and Nora plan a final protest taking place during prom, in which victims of SA stand together against the abusers in their small college town, ending the novel on a courageous note. Overall, this was an amazing book that changed my viewpoint on some important issues and I cannot recommend it enough.
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