Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

22 reviews

emotional slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Incredible, heart-wrenching story. The fact that it took me 6 reading sessions to go through it is not really something I would've fully chosen. Things kept coming up that I had to attend to, but I truly did not want to put this down. There were a couple of points where some of the incestuous feelings implications were a bit uncomfortable, which is what's leading to the 4.75 star rating (instead of a 5 star rating). But honestly it wasn't too bad and this was still a nearly perfect book and one that I'd recommend to others.

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I feel bad because this book seems so universally beloved, but my first impressions of this book were mild, and devolved to fully annoyed, before I realized I was too far in to bail. June’s love for her uncle, and infatuation of sorts that she develops for his grieving partner, seem both believable in the context of being a young person trying to figure out who they are, and still manages to be off putting amid her internal monologue and her actions, that tentatively but somewhat consistently try to invoke the possibility of a sexual place. Despite seeming to be more of a romantic than a sexual person, she manages to interject a desire for or an undertone for the fantasy of a physically romantic relationship with her uncle, and then with his partner, despite not fully seeming to know what that means. She knows what the act of sex is, but doesn’t seem to understand its relationship to intimacy, which makes sense because she’s a literal kid. She knows she wants something, as a means to be known, understood, and cherished, she’s just not sure how to realize that want or what it looks like; she does know enough to recognize that it’s taboo to want it from her uncle, or another adult gay man. I fully get the awkwardness, uncertainty, and anxiety that accompanies this age, and June oscillates between shame and self flagellation, or commitment to these feelings with equal gusto. June relates her experiences with Finn and Toby to the reader either as self deprecatingly or self pityingly as possible, or with romantic whimsy, as if their actions toward her indicate pursuit of her in small, intimate ways. The external narrative also contributes to this off-key note, with random moments in which people suggest a fourteen year old girl and an adult man were maybe a couple, which feels unnerving, even as the narrative provides a contrast of June’s pursuit by a boy her own age (who shares a lot of her interests, accepts her for her interests and quirks, for whom she comparatively has no interest in as a person). Also slightly unbelievable is that Toby is fully aware that June is fourteen, but will get drunk and smoke cigarettes with her, both actions she didn’t partake in, but emulates with Toby; the same actions that she disdains in her sister, Greta, at the parties she forces June to go to.

The other characters just seem so transparent; the girls’ mother’s rant about forgoing opportunities and then waking up at your kitchen table wondering if you’ve wasted your life every day was just painful. I also know this is the late 80s, and that open hostility towards people of color, immigrants, and the queer community was largely socially condoned, which June seems to be acutely aware of as being dehumanizing and unjust, and tries not to participate in it. This seems uncharacteristically sharp of her amid her inability to discern why her sister is so cruel to her, or to sit with her jealousy of Finn’s relationship with Toby, that intermingles with her desire to be loved uniquely and specifically by each of them.
My favorite part, genuinely, was the reconciliation between Greta and June. It was the first time they were both fully transparent, and was the most believable, and touching, part of the book. Genuinely, the last 50 pages were the most engaging, authentic, and gripping of the novel as a whole; I wished the whole thing had been like this.

I know she’s a kid, and I get how being a kid is genuinely hard; I just found June continuously unlikable, which is not something I often feel about kids. It’s hard to become who you are. But it’s a lot harder when so much of your identity seems cobbled together by its relationship to role models you wish to both embody and be consumed by. Where is the person under that impulse? What, or who, is left once they’re gone? 

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Jesus Christ. At first I thought everyone was being dumb when they said the book was a bad representation of AIDS. All I was seeing was period typical Seraphobia, and then I got to the part where one character equated an incestuous relationship with homosexuality. I should've stopped when the FMC started saying she was in love with her uncle, but foolishly, I continued on. Their whole family dynamic was fucked up. And you're telling me that after falling in love with her uncle, she fell in love with his gay widow? His gay widow who stalked her, encouraged her to drive at the age of 14, gave her cigarettes and alcohol, and made many allusions to them being in a relationship together? 

Her mother was fucked up, making her brother keep his lover in the basement so she wouldn't have to see him, her sister treated her like she and it was alluded to that she was not only suicidal but sleeping with her drama teacher, and her father was just there. 

And in the end, there's an unnecessary death and a monologue about how much she loved (was in love with) her uncle and also her uncles widow. 

Go get therapy girl!! In fact, send your whole damn family to therapy!! 

I do not understand now this book is so highly accoladed. 

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emotional reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

oh...this book truly is wonderful; its so sad yet so beautiful and full of hope. its a tragedy through and through - of everyone losing finn, of june losing toby - but its full of such love that it doesnt feel as heartbreaking as it could. and the love really is so rich in this book. june loves finn - i do have my issues with that, but i understand why she feels what she feels - and finn and toby loved each other and danni loved her brother and she loves her children and june loves greta and finn loved everyone and love...its everywhere in this book, for both the good and the bad. its the fuel for this book and the characters and it makes this book what it is. and thats why it hurts so much because love only does so much, only goes so far and then when you can no longer love that person it goes - where? you have to keep it inside yourself because the love you have one person is for them; you cant put it on someone else. so you keep it inside and you hold it close the way you held the person you loved close. and like...god. i could wax poetic about this book forever. its just so good. and the title...it hurts because at first to me it meant that june could tell the wolves about finn, she could tell that hes home but by the end of the book is dead, the wolves are dead, and now the wolves can tell finn that june is home. like...god. pain.

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challenging emotional sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Overall feels like the most accurate representation of making decisions as a teenager, so we’ll done there. But had to really convince myself to keep reading half way thru. I guess I’m glad I did? I don’t know how I feel yet

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

There is something so completely raw about this book that really caught me off guard. 

The way June talks about her uncle, and Toby to an extent, made me deeply uncomfortable but i’m willing to be a bit forgiving because i remember being fourteen and having a messy family where i didn’t get to see people for years and that was a weird time. but it’s definitely something that marked the book down for me. 

depiction of the aids crisis, however, and the way that it affected the people involved was beautiful in a terrible way. my heart breaks for those who we lost and whose stories have died with them. 

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