📚A River of Golden Bones by A.K. Mulford📚

Overall Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/4

Spice Rating:🌶️🌶️

✨Tropes✨

⚔️Found Family

⚔️Fated Mates

⚔️Sleep Beauty Retelling 

⚔️LGBTQIA+ Rep 

⚔️Mental Health Rep 

⚔️Self Acceptance 

⚔️Strong Main Characters

⚔️Secret Identities 

⚔️Wolf Shifters x Humans

✨Initial Thoughts✨

This book is so wonderfully profound. It explores gender identity, self acceptance, and mental health issues, amongst other themes. It is presented in a Sleeping Beauty retelling with wolf shifters, but it’s done so that all of the aforementioned themes make sense. Calla’s journey from bitter self loathing to beautiful self acceptance is one of the best character development stories I’ve read in a long time. Calla’s personal struggle with not knowing their place in the world as well as what “category” she “falls” into is heart wrenching. However, with the assistance of the people around them, Calla makes personal discoveries that finally bring them peace.

Favorite Quote:

“I realized there was someone within me under the layers of self-doubt and agitation…. Daggers and jackets, dresses and kohl, man and woman beyond. I exist somewhere, flowing in between them. And I thought I’d have to break myself into little pieces to make them fit me, but I don’t…. I am a whole person always, flowing, carving my own path.”