Skinning the Coyote – Nick McAnulty

3.5 stars

This was only my first western horror, but I really enjoy the genre a lot. It has all the best gritty, “last man standing” qualities of a western with the added anxiety and desperation of a horror. Skinning the Coyote more than delivered on both fronts!

However, this felt like it took forever to read. I was caught up in the story and had to keep furiously reading to find out what happened, but I never felt like I was getting anywhere. The frequent POV changes during each chapter made the book seem way longer than it actually was. It became a slog to get through that somewhat soured my experience.

I also thought the supernatural element was a bit clunky. It was a really interesting add to the story, but it seemed like something entirely separate from the main story. I saw it briedly right at the beginning, then it was gone until it randomly showed back up in the last quarter of the book. I didn’t really get any answers about it either. What was it? Why was it there? What was its relationship to the old woman? Who was she? That part of the story feels unfinished; it just didn’t integrate as well into everything else for me.

That being said, Kit really grew on me.  I liked reading his interactions with Eli and Shane, and how all three of them grew closer throughout the book. He was such an engaging character and, despite his legitimate flaws, I couldn’t help but to root for him and hope he made it out okay. For some reason, I kept imagining him in my head as Kip Sabian (the jury is still out on whether that’s a good thing 😂).

Nick has a knack for writing beautifully developed characters! Even though I didn’t get to see much of Weston in the actual story, my heart still bled for him. I even felt a little bad for Gideon, despite everything he and his brother had done. About the only characters I didn’t feel some sort of empathy towards were Doc and Seth, otherwise I felt the others all had some sort of redeeming quality about them and it made for some horribly tragic dynamic characters that really took a piece of my heart for themselves.

Thank you, NetGalley and Wicked House Publishing, for the early look!