Raised by Wolves by Tristan Bancks

Title: Raised by Wolves

Author: Tristan Bancks

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Penguin Australia

Published: 5^th May 2026

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: When your dad’s a fugitive, who do you trust – him, or yourself?

Twelve-year-old Olive Silver knows how to check every room with a knife when she gets home from school, how to survive alone and how to keep secrets. She’s had to – ever since her criminal dad abandoned her family five years ago and let them pay for his crime.

But now he’s back.

The day she spots him outside her school, everything tilts. Olive calls her big brother Ben, who’s two days from graduating the police academy, and follows Dad through rain and darkness, across railway tracks and through wrecking yards, desperate for answers. Does Dad love her? Or is he only back for the money?

As the night spins out of control, Olive faces a choice: let Dad go, or hunt him down and bring him to justice.

Raised by Wolves is a tense, heart-stopping thriller about loyalty, betrayal and finding out who you really are when the people you trust most let you down.

~*~

The Silver kids are back. It’s been five years since the events of Two Wolves, which I read before I read the sequel. Ben’s off at the police academy, two days from graduating. Olive and her Mum are sort of, finally settled after years of uncertainty. Dad scarpered and let Mum take the blame five years ago, but now he is back. And he wants the bag of money.

Everything changes, and Olive and Ben team up to follow their dad, across railway tracks and through wrecking yards, because they know it’s time he was caught. He has gotten away with what he did for so long, and never had to face the consequences. Olive has one question plaguing her mind the entire time though: does dad love her, or is he saying what she wants to hear from him to get the money?

Questions about class and justice intersect in this novel, because Ben and Olives dad did commit a crime in the first book, and he should have faced the music rather than dragging his family down. The first book took place over a number of days, whilst this one takes place over a single night, with a countdown at the top of the chapters with the time each event takes place.

It keeps the book moving as Olive is constantly grappling with questions about betrayal and loyalty, who she can trust and how she feels about her family, which evokes a sense of the complicated feelings we have about our families and the people we know, especially when there are things they have done that are questionable. It’s a thriller for middle grade and older readers that sits perfectly within the genre. Younger readers can get a taste of the genre and what they might be able to expect in older books without the increased tension and violence adult books often have. It brings the story full circle from the first book as well.

And it is about family and the lengths people go to for their family, or the fallout when the family is abandoned and has to start again. Everything in this book works well as both a sequel and a standalone, as Tristan drops hints and information about the first book, contextualising this follow up. I found reading both back-to-back to be a richer reading experience though, and they both show how to write crime for younger readers well.

This exciting and thrilling story kept me on the edge of my seat, and is one that feels like it has to be read in one sitting just to find out what happens. Each chapter ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, so you are compelled to continue reading to find out what happened to Olive and her family. I hope readers will enjoy this book as much as I have.