Book Review for The Wolves Within Our Walls by L.E. Flinders

The Wolves Within Our Walls , by L.E. Flinders, is a psychological suspense about living with a facade, one that hides a horrific monster beneath.

Zoe Wilkes lives an average life, working as a waitress and living with her roommate, Ben. One night, she is awoken by an alarming call from Becky, who urges them to go to her house. Not long after that, Zoe and Ben are evacuated to a shelter, where food and water are in limited supply. She escapes, only to run into a mysterious man named Jacob. Jacob leads her to a safe haven that focuses on hindering conflicts, promoting education and creativity, and allowing people to work together in a safe and productive manner. At first, she is enticed by this world, from meeting her soon-to-be lover, Miles, to becoming fast friends with the elites of this society. However, after finding a bloody knife in Miles’s possession, she realizes that not everything is as it seems. With this perfect illusion on the brink of falling apart, Zoe must confront Jacob, as secrets emerge from a corrupted darkness she hadn’t known had existed.

I enjoyed reading about the relationships between Jacob, Miles, and Holly. There was a certain eeriness to their supposed closeness, and while I kept telling myself they were all friends, there was something about them that didn’t sit well with me. When Miles first approached Zoe, I was taken with his sweetness. However, as the story continued, just like the relationship between Jacob, Miles, and Holly, there was something off-putting about him. When Zoe really did have to run, it was as if I was watching the monsters in each of these characters rise out of them, as if a mask was crumbling away from their faces. Finders outdid himself in this regard, illustrating that even the most perfect of disguises wither away, just like everything in time. It’s reminiscent of movies such as The Crazies and The Stepford Wives, something that I thoroughly liked.

Finders crafted an interesting world where two sides struggles to dominate the other. One side was a perfect utopia where everyone works together and gets along, while the other was an apocalyptic wasteland where people have to scavenge to survive. The fact that this utopia had a parasitic interaction with the outside world is something to be said, devouring others in order to survive. It was as if I was watching the Ouroboros itself consuming its own flesh and blood, trying to thrive in a never ending cycle of pain and suffering. In another interesting note, Jacob is like this. He pretends that everything is fine, that he is only trying to protect the people he feels deserves to live, all the while ignoring the fact that he has to trap them in a society where nothing ever changes. He destroys his own morals, but endeavors to live through them in that same, twisted mindset. Even when he has nothing left, he attempts to continue to do so. It was the very thing that allowed Zoe to kill him in the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While I didn’t find the protagonist interesting, I loved the dynamic between the characters. I also loved the corrupted nature of Jacob’s society, as well as the delusions that these characters tried so valiantly to maintain. Because of this, I would give this book a rating of a 4.0 out of 5 stars, and would recommend it to fans of The Feral Sentence by G.C Julien, alongside the video game, BioShock.