Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

By Carol Rifka Brunt

1987. The only person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus is her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can be herself only in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down.
 
But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life. At the funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail containing a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and that this unexpected friend just might be the one she needs the most.

So I was super pumped about this when I started, I was a few chapters in and immediately hooked.  And then... I started to hate it.  The main character, June, is supposed to be 14-15, but feels more like 11-12, she has no social or emotional maturity, is deeply and weirdly in love with her uncle Finn who is dying of AIDS (and even weirder, we find out at the end of the book that Finn's partner, Toby told Finn that he (i.e., Finn) would make her fall in love with him, like that's a normal thing to say about an uncle-niece relationship) and is really off-putting to everyone around her. 

This infatuation/all-encompassing love she has for her uncle was really what made me reluctant to keep going. If she were actually dating him (which it sounds like she wanted to do[?!]), she'd be a plethora of possessive red flags.  She's mad other people aren't as upset as she is by his death, she doesn't want to share her time with him at all, she gets mad that other people know things about him that she doesn't know (like his partner! who lived with him for years!), she's totally undone by the idea that some of the things she thought were Finn's (like a jar of guitar picks) actually turn out to be his partner's, etc., etc. Like dangerous levels of obsession here. And after Finn's death, she does the exact same thing to his partner, Toby.  Like, at one point she steals her passport so she can take Toby on a trip to England, like that's a totally normal thing for a 14 year old to suggest to this adult man who was living with her uncle, whom she has known (and known of) for probably two whole months, if that (Finn died February 5th, and the book wraps up around the end of tax season). 

I forced myself to keep going, and started to get back into around the 3/4 mark, where she starts to see her various lies beginning to unwind, and she actually has a conversation with her sister, Greta (instead of assuming the worst about her). I felt worse for the people around her than I did her.  She sounded like a petulant, ignorant child, always thinking in these totally black and white terms, like her mother is horrible for what she did to her brother, Finn (even though we find out Finn stayed longer in England because he met Toby, thus eliminating the chance for them to work as artists together), and how if people don't do things just exactly the way she has it in her mind, they must HATE HER, because SHE'S SO WEIRD. If this is meant to be a picture of someone with a social disorder, kudos.  Because like I said, I cannot imagine a 14 year old, even in 1987, who thinks it's reasonable to be a caregiver for her uncle's lover, and that said caregiving would involve a trip overseas. 

Around the 3/4 mark, as I've said, the action starts to pick up, and we spend less time mooning about how wonderful Finn and June's relationship was (despite the fact that she *GASP* never knew that Finn couldn't drive, how dare she not know that???) and how deeply she's grasping onto Toby, and there's actual action, regarding the painting she and Greta have been defacing, regarding Greta's habit of getting drunk and lying down in the woods, and Toby's illness. I did tear up a little when she rescues him from Bellevue Hospital, but I don't know if the ending saves the rest of the book. I could definitely have used less in the middle, when we spend all this time hearing about how wonderful her uncle was and how only he understood her, truly, (even though she apparently knew very little about him or his life), and how every single thing that Finn ever touched was precious, precious to her!  She does remind me a lot of Gollum, actually.  Obsessive, unpleasant to be around, always assuming the worst of people, pretends, 'oh, woe is me' even though she's pretty much 100% self interested herself.  

I know I chose this for the 1980s, and the AIDS crisis looms large, but aside from that, it just didn't feel super 80s to me.  The Sun Down Motel felt more 80s for all that the time period didn't even matter as much in that book.  

 

13: A Book Set in the 1980s

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

By Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper

A weekend roaming narrow old lanes, touring the faded glories of a country manor, and quaffing pints in the pub. How charming. That is, unless you have the misfortune of finding yourself in an English Murder Village, where danger lurks around each picturesque cobblestone corner and every sip of tea may be your last. If you insist on your travels, do yourself a favor and bring a copy of this little book. It may just keep you alive. 

Brought to life with dozens of Gorey-esque drawings by illustrator Jay Cooper and peppered with allusions to classic crime series and unmistakably British murder lore, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village gives you the tools you need to avoid the same fate, should you find yourself in a suspiciously cozy English village (or simply dream of going). Good luck! And whatever you do, avoid the vicar.

I can vouchsafe that this can be read in one sitting because I did, in fact, read it all in one sitting, while I was improbably stuck without phone or kindle with a sleeping baby on top of me.  The only book within grabbing distance* was Your Guide and serendipitously, I managed to finish the whole thing without waking the baby.  

It's one of those books that I've always found a bit gimmicky, you know, one hit wonders that are charming enough to pass the time, but are more for gifting, reading once, and then putting to the side and forgetting.  That being said, it was still delightful.  I'm probably a core audience member for it, since I got really into Midsommer Murders during the first year of the pandemic** and (as you may know) am very much into country house murder books by Agatha Christie***. And if you like Midsommer Murders and enjoy the idea that these little villages are constantly beplauged by murders, you will enjoy Your Guide. It covers all the bases, the village fete ("A nice way to spend a summer's day and thin out the local population"), people who leave messages ("All messages in a Murder Village are bad news. It means someone Knows Something. Don't leave messages. Don't hang around people who do."), the Folly ("It's a small, fake temple at the far side of the pond, perfect for picnics, trysts, and casual strangulations"), the farmer ("Constantly fielding offers from city folk who want to turn the farmland into a shopping center and fielding tthose same city folk who want to turn the farmland into a shopping center.") and of course, the vicar ("When you see the vicar, run.").

There's cute in-jokes about (ironically) the same trope that Connie Willis mentions in To Say Nothing of the Dog, i.e., that the butler did it for the first fifty books and then he became the most obvious suspect, so they had to use other people. And a couple of quizzes which test your knowledge and ultimately teach the greatest lesson of all: that sometimes, [SPOILER] in order to avoid being murdered, you must become the murderer.  True wisdom.

*Untrue, I had three books within grabbing distance, because I was still in my own house, after all, but How the Word is Passed isn't exactly light reading to pass the time while a ticking time bomb is waiting to go off on your stomach at any time, and the other book was soft cover and hard to hold without using both hands.

**I still enjoy them, but lack the time to watch them, what with the aforementioned baby and all.

***Mrs. Marple is probably closer to the Your Guide vibe, but I hate Mrs. Marple.  I know I've talked about this before****, and I know I should try again as an adult, but man, it's annoying to feel like half of Christie's oeuvre is unavailable to me because of that old bat.

****Maybe I haven't talked about this before! I loathe Mrs. Marple, her allusions to things like "Oh, it reminds me of the vicar and the bookblack boy" and then you find out the vicar stole the bootblack boy's money and the bootblack boy stood up in the middle of service and denounced him and the vicar went off and became a pirate out of shame, and so that's how you know that the real killer was the cook, because the cook was also doing it out of revenge, are so obnoxious as a reader, since we DON'T KNOW ANY OF THESE PEOPLE OR SITUATIONS and it feels like a cheat to keep the clues away from the reader to avoid spoiling the mystery too soon, and also Mrs. Marple acts so self-effacing, but she's just as self-satisfied as Poirot.  Call a spade a spade, at least Poirot acknowledges his own non-humility. 

*****This doesn't have any corresponding note above, so you shouldn't even be here but I also wanted to point out that Maureen Johnson is the author of the Truly Devious series, so I'm now a real fan of hers, and Jay Cooper's illustrations have a fun, Edward Gorey-esque tone to them which greatly enhances the book.

24: A Book You Can Read in One Sitting

These Witches Don't Burn

These Witches Don't Burn

By Isabel Sterling

Hannah's a witch, but not the kind you're thinking of. She's the real deal, an Elemental with the power to control fire, earth, water, and air. But even though she lives in Salem, Massachusetts, her magic is a secret she has to keep to herself. If she's ever caught using it in front of a Reg (read: non-witch), she could lose it. For good. So, Hannah spends most of her time avoiding her ex-girlfriend (and fellow Elemental Witch) Veronica, hanging out with her best friend, and working at the Fly by Night Cauldron selling candles and crystals to tourists, goths, and local Wiccans.

But dealing with her ex is the least of Hannah's concerns when a terrifying blood ritual interrupts the end-of-school-year bonfire. Evidence of dark magic begins to appear all over Salem, and Hannah's sure it's the work of a deadly Blood Witch. The issue is, her coven is less than convinced, forcing Hannah to team up with the last person she wants to see: Veronica.

While the pair attempt to smoke out the Blood Witch at a house party, Hannah meets Morgan, a cute new ballerina in town. But trying to date amid a supernatural crisis is easier said than done, and Hannah will have to test the limits of her power if she's going to save her coven and get the girl, especially when the attacks on Salem's witches become deadlier by the day. With everything she loves on the line, Hannah must confront this murderous villain before her coven--and any chance she has with the new girl--is destroyed.

I thought this would be more of a fun "real witches in Salem" and "getting over ex-girlfriend who you also have to work with" but this wasn't that much fun.   The description is the most fun part.  The story itself is a weird plot-driven teen "mystery", banging along hitting various cliches without really being satisfying at any point. 

To begin with, the whole break-up between Veronica and Hannah is never really described. Apparently the author wrote a separate short story that gets into it, but in These Witches, it basically drives most of the emotion of the first part of the book and we don't even know what happened.  No clue why blood witches are so bad (except that one hurt Hannah in revenge for something Veronica did), no clue why Veronica thinks Hannah broke up with her, while Hannah thinks Veronica initiated it, no clue why Veronica thinks they're going to get back together. 

And there's a bunch of incidents, which look really suspicious, but they all happen to be done by all different people, just a coincidence, nothing to worry about!  That goth kid kills the raccoon, Nolan throws the brick, Morgan wrote the glyphs and Barton is a witch hunter.  It feels like the author is trying so hard to misdirect people that they included all this stuff which actually just makes the fact that they're all supposedly unrelated even more glaring and weirdly unrealistic.  And it doesn't work, either, the witch hunter is obvious. 

PLUS, we're told that witches who reveal themselves to Regs are excommunicated and potentially executed, and YET, Veronica and Hannah are both out there spraying magic around like it's going out of style: put this fire out, put that fire out, increase this fire, use an honesty charm, escape from a submerged car. I'm sorry, I know teenagers are idiots, but surely if they were told (and legitimately believed) they could be killed for doing this stuff, I have to believe they'd be more circumspect.  It all just feels... cardboard-y, like someone's putting on a play of what this book should be, but there's a lack of structure behind it.  It's flimsy.  Anyway, it's totally readable, but I definitely started losing interest by the THIRD time Veronica insisted they they were getting back together (even though she was also banging someone else?) and Hannah bailed on Morgan for the FIFTH time, and insisted there was a blood witch around.  And as you can see, my irritation with the book only grew as I looked back on it.  

16: A Book About Witches

The Sun Down Motel

The Sun Down Motel

By Simone St. James

Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.

Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

This was one I was excited by, and I liked it a lot even though I don't generally get into ghost stories. There's ghosts in the book, but they're fairly matter of fact, mostly there to point fingers at murderers and rain righteousness down. It's a bit like The dollhouse Murders in that sense, and can you believe one of my teachers read that in class? I have to go read that again. 

Anyway, after her mother dies of cancer, Carly decides to go investigate the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York, where her aunt disappeared thirty five years ago.  Her aunt, Viv, tells her story in alternating chapters. As it turns out, Viv's encounters at the Sun Down progress from ghosts to serial killers.

 

What I liked about this book is that both Carly and Viv are smart enough to take precautions - although Viv narrowly escapes a bad hitchhike upon her arrival in Fall, she quickly learns the ins and outs of identifying and avoiding predators.  And Carly is the 21st century, smart phone using kind of girl, who has grown up with the "stranger danger" idea.  But the author still manages to put them in real danger without making them stupid (at least, not until the finale which feels so good you don't mind how unrealistic it is). 

I also really liked the setting - small town, sure, but also the 1980s aspects of it were fun to dig into.  We get a lot of purple eyeshadow and funky haircuts, and while I would never want to live through the 80s, like Stranger Things, it's got a good nostalgic kick to it, and feels somewhat fresh.

48: A Book with Two POVs