A review by bellascho
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

June is a 14 year old girl in New York during the 1980s. Her uncle, famous painter Finn Weiss, has AIDS and in his last days is choosing to paint a portrait of her and her older sister Greta. Every Sunday they drive out to his apartment and sit while he paints them. The family doesn’t receive the painting until Finn has succumbed to his illness and a mysterious man calls to inform them of his passing. When the painting is unveiled June notices buttons have been painted onto her shirt and the clearly inexperienced hand tells her it was not Finn who added them. When heading into the funeral June see an unknown man waiting outside and when questioning who he is, is told he is the man who killed her uncle. June decides she will hate the man, Toby, but first she must get every scrap of Finn that he has. Over the course of the next few months June gets to know Toby and decides to take care of him like her uncle asked her to while he also slowly fades away from AIDS. 

I went into this book really expecting to like it. I feel like the AIDS epidemic is often ignored today, many kids are never even taught about this point in history when so many people were dying because of it’s association with a “taboo” topic. Hearing about this illness from the point of view of someone losing a close family member seems like a great way to introduce such a thing to young readers. The execution did not do this. June’s uncle and boyfriend dying of AIDS is secondary
to the fact that she is in love with him.
This addition and ENTIRE FOCUS of the story is completely unnecessary.
In no world would I choose to read a book about a 14-year-old girl learning to accept that she was in love with her now dead uncle and is currently in love with his grieving boyfriend.
AIDS as a topic is an incredibly important one and something the author could have done so much and instead she decided to
write about incestuous love
for a bunch of teenagers to read. In the end Greta, the character the audience is actively supposed to hate for most of the story, has a for more interesting and digestible story than the main character.
I have never thought incest
was a much needed addition to the topics to be explored in YA novels and this book definitely proved my point. Some of the banter throughout the story is really well written and enjoyable to read, but it always loops back to fact that June
has feelings for these grown men, one who is related to her. Overall I am really disappointed in this story, especially because I was really looking forward to reading it and now it feels like I wasted however many hours it took. 
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