50 Books Challenge 2013 - # 26: The Loop by Nicholas Evans

Title: The Loop
Author: Nicholas Evans
Story: Things aren't going too well for wolf biologist Helen Ross. At 29, she's unemployed, single, and has just learned that her father is marrying someone younger, richer, and prettier than herself. Back in her lonely log cabin in Cape Cod, frantically chain-smoking, she receives a message from her former lover Dan Prior. Prior, also a biologist, works for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service wolf-recovery program. In return for helping him track the lupine posse, Prior will provide her with a cabin, truck, and a snowmobile for good measure in a rustic little town called Hope, just outside of Helena, Montana. Within moments of her arrival, she finds out what she's up against: a small town with a long history of wolf fear and loathing, no resources, and a powerful rancher who will do whatever it takes to eliminate the wolves. The rancher, testosterone-saturated Buck Calder, has got the community riled up after a wolf stalked his daughter's home and killed the family dog. He won't stop until every last endangered wolf is dead, which proves problematic for Ross when she decides to romance his 18-year-old son, Luke.
Start: july 11th 2013
End: july 18th 2013
Comment: Last year I read Nicholas Evans' "The Horse Whisperer", which totally surprised me by being better then I thought. So when I saw "The Loop" I just had to pick it up. It has been catching dust on my shelve, so during this theme I just needed to finally read this book. And this book was even better. For some reason wolves have always fascinated me, more then horses. A wolves howl is actually my favorite noise. It's really interesting to read about the wolves and Helen's research. What I like in the beginning, athough it's a bit slow, that each character gets its own chapter of introduction. Evans is very detailed about their history, so you really get to know all the characters and they have depth. Helen was my favorite, we had some things in common. And Abe was my least favorite, he was an ass! Evans is like the male version of Sara Gruen, who also writes novels about animals and nature and they both grab you with their wonderful writing.
Rating: 5/ 5

50 Books Challenge 2012 - # 2: The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

Title: The Horse Whisperer
Author: Nicholas Evans
Story: A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest begins -- to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to Tom Booker, known as the horse whisperer
Start: january 6th 2012
End: januari 11th 2012
Comment: I bought this book on sale and I've had it on my shelve for quite some time now. The reason I didn't read it before is because I didn't really expect much from it and by the look of its size I thought it would be a drag and it wouldn't keep my interest. It surprised me though. When I started reading it was really hard to put it down. I truly enjoyed every minute of the story. I was moved by the strained mother/ daughter relationship between Annie and Grace and I especially loved how Grace dealt with her struggles. The accident, losing her legg, her traumatized horse Pilgrim and eventually trying to ride a horse again. Tom was my favorite character. He was a very strong man, but also gentle and very lonely. It was natural that Annie and Tom reached out to each other. It was obvious that Annie didn't have a happy marriage with her husband Robert. He was a good man, to her and also as a father for Grace. With Tom she found all the things she missed with Robert. The ending prevented me from giving the book a full 5 star rating. I just didn't believe what happened to Tom in this book. It didn't really fit his character, it didn't work for me as a reader and it's hard to believe that Tom would do what he did at the end of the story.
Rating: 4/ 5