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A review by bonniereads777
Winter of the Wolf by Martha Hunt Handler
3.0
Winter of the Wolf is about a tragic loss, and how a family copes with it. Bean and her brother Sam are close, and share more with each other than they do anyone else in the family. When Sam dies of apparent suicide, Bean, her parents, and her remaining brothers struggle to cope. Bean cannot accept that Sam would kill himself, so she starts an investigation. What she finds is a deeper understanding of her own family, and eventually the truth.
What I loved about this book is the true way it deals with an apparent suicide and the family's reaction to it. Unfortunately I have experience with this situation. Each member blames themselves, which is very true to life, and each individual grieves in different ways. The person or person who finds the family member is haunted forever because they cannot unsee that image. Everyone in the family cannot help to think of how they might have been able to stop it. The author describes this so realistically. Some family members break and retreat, some try to act as if everything is normal, and some reach out to others. In this book, Bean's mother falls into depression and retreats to her room. Sometimes when a parent retreats in grief, a child takes over as parent, and that happens in this book in some ways.
There are some things I felt were not completed and left hanging in this book. Sam admired, studied, and emulated the Inuit people, and this was brought up often in the book, but was not fully realized. There were no Inuit characters and no communication with Inuit characters other than Bean reading some books. Towards the last third of the book, I began to wonder why the Inuit people were brought up at all. In addition, Sam's wishes for a green burial were raised, but not honored. A totem pole was brought up, but not fully realized. And most importantly, when Sam's parents learned the exact reason for his death, which was autoerotic asphyxiation, their response was pretty underwhelming and unrealistic for the situation.
Although this book was told from the perspective of a 15 - 17 year old girl, this is not a YA book. There are adult themes that need adult supervision such as suicide, sex, autoerotic asphyxiation, drugs, and the occult.
The audiobook is read by Kelly Pruner, who does a good job as the grieving teenage girl, Bean.
I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publishers and Netgalley. My review is optional.
What I loved about this book is the true way it deals with an apparent suicide and the family's reaction to it. Unfortunately I have experience with this situation. Each member blames themselves, which is very true to life, and each individual grieves in different ways. The person or person who finds the family member is haunted forever because they cannot unsee that image. Everyone in the family cannot help to think of how they might have been able to stop it. The author describes this so realistically. Some family members break and retreat, some try to act as if everything is normal, and some reach out to others. In this book, Bean's mother falls into depression and retreats to her room. Sometimes when a parent retreats in grief, a child takes over as parent, and that happens in this book in some ways.
There are some things I felt were not completed and left hanging in this book. Sam admired, studied, and emulated the Inuit people, and this was brought up often in the book, but was not fully realized. There were no Inuit characters and no communication with Inuit characters other than Bean reading some books. Towards the last third of the book, I began to wonder why the Inuit people were brought up at all. In addition, Sam's wishes for a green burial were raised, but not honored. A totem pole was brought up, but not fully realized. And most importantly, when Sam's parents learned the exact reason for his death, which was autoerotic asphyxiation, their response was pretty underwhelming and unrealistic for the situation.
Although this book was told from the perspective of a 15 - 17 year old girl, this is not a YA book. There are adult themes that need adult supervision such as suicide, sex, autoerotic asphyxiation, drugs, and the occult.
The audiobook is read by Kelly Pruner, who does a good job as the grieving teenage girl, Bean.
I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publishers and Netgalley. My review is optional.