Book Talk: Tell the Wolves I'm Home

I usually struggle to come up with something to say about the books I love the most - usually because I find myself wanting to shove the book into your hands, tears still streaming down my face, and ramble incoherently about how amazing and wonderful and altering the experience of reading this book was, which is probably a little frightening to the average person.

Instead, I put off talking (or writing my blog post) about it, which only makes the experience more difficult in the long run. So, this time, I've decided to jump right in, incoherence be damned, and share my thoughts on my latest and most amazing read, Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.

For the last few months, it seems like I've been seeing this book everywhere I go - and I have to admit, I was totally drawn in by the title. I took a screenshot of the cover and added it to my wish list, but I knew next to nothing about it when I checked out the audiobook.

I was completely unaware of the emotional roller coaster I was about to embark on. When June's first love and favorite person in the entire world dies, she doesn't know if she will ever recover. Then, in the midst of it all, a man she's never met contacts her and suddenly everything she thought she knew about her family changes.

This novel examines all kinds of relationships and all kinds of love - between parents and children, between siblings, between lovers, and between people who hover somewhere in between. I was shocked and awed by the tiny details that make this book such a nuanced portrayal of the relationships in our lives. What made this book stand out, in my mind at least, was how the author captures the little gestures and moments that, when set together, define us, in many ways, more than the big moments ever do.

Never far from my mind when listening to this story was the realization that however fictional, this story was representative of something greater - an amalgamation of lives and experiences that had happened - maybe not in the same way as June and Greta and Finn and Toby's, but their stories were being shared, in some small way, through the one I was reading in that moment. It's a powerful thing - and its one of the things I love most about reading. It's also what made the experience of reading this book all the more beautiful and heartbreaking.

It's difficult to talk about this book in detail without giving away some of it's major plot points, and rather than do that, I'm just going to say that if you haven't already read this book or put a hold on it at your local library, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!