Wolf By Wolf is the story of a young Jewish girl working with the rebellion to assassinate Hitler at the end of a grueling cross-continental motorcycle race. At the same time, she struggles to uphold an alternate identity. Yale was taken to a concentration camp as a young girl where she was taken to be an experiment. Over the years these experiments changed Yale’s very genetic makeup until she was able to alter her appearance at will. With the ability to “Skin Shift”, Yale escapes the camp and finds herself in the rebellion. After years of training, she is sent to assume the identity of Adele Wolfe, the first female victor of the Axis Tour, a rugged motorcycle race across the Natzi Empire. She knows in order to complete her mission she must find a way to navigate the road ahead and the mysterious past between Adele and a fellow racer and somehow come out on top to secure an invitation to the Victors Ball.
Yale can live as anybody she wants and can change it at will but with the ability to be anyone, the biggest challenge Yale faces is trying to be herself. The only things that ever stay the same for Yale are her tattoos. “Four memories and a reminder.” Yale keeps these wolves, her own “lonely pack.” These wolves are the only attachment Yale has to her true self and even so, she has to keep them hidden from the world. Yale is constantly second-guessing her choices when they don’t have to do with her mission. Yale slowly begins to develop feelings for her biggest competitor, Victor Luka Lowë, and even though he stays by her side when he knows she isn’t actually Adele Wolfe, Yale struggles to think that she is human enough to be loved.
Yale was only seven years old when she was taken to a Jewish camp. At such a young age she was experimented on, starved, overworked, and exposed to the harsh climate and the tortures that many endured. After years of being experimented on, Yale managed to escape leaving behind her barracks, her mother, her friends, and a set of Russian nesting dolls that had been made of her by an older woman who took care of Yale until the day she died. Yale blames herself for leaving and constantly reminds herself of these memories. Not only does she use the tattoos as memories but she keeps these small tokens of others close to her through everything to remind herself of everyone she has lost. Despite the fact that Yale is incredibly closed off to the world, she seems to live in one all of her own which revolves entirely around her past that she can’t let go of, and in order to complete her mission Yale needs to let go of her past and uncover what is lurking in Adele’s.
This is one of my all-time favorite books Ever. I love the story and I love the way the author portrays the characters. I enjoy that just because Yale is lonely, she still is mission-oriented and everything she does has a purpose that leads back to her overall goal. I also appreciate that although there is a romantic element to the story, it doesn’t become the whole point of the story and it really fits the characters because they are brought together out of a shared need to help each other but they both would pull apart from the other if they began inhibiting their end goals. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anybody. The book can get a little gruesome and it gets quite sad at times but although it’s a historical fiction book there are some fantasy, adventure, and thriller aspects and even if those stories aren’t your thing they book is just so enjoyable to read for the characters and simply the way the author writes in general.