When I decided to start the ‘things I love’ page on my site, I knew this would be first book post.
It’s taken me a while to think about how I could best represent this book. To better understand my response, I feel like I need to give you some background.
I’m heartless.
Ok. So maybe that is not an accurate depiction of me as a person, but when it comes to emotional responses, it really kind of fits. My family and friends will tell you it’s true. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve found myself the only person not crying in a movie, from a touching story, at a funeral or having a Pavlovian response to the Sarah McLachlin ‘Angel’ commercial. The one where even the animals are crying.
As a little girl, I can remember my twin sobbing inconsolably to the movie The Champ. It came out years before, but we happened upon it flipping through the channels one Sunday. I was quite certain she would never be the same while I simply thought, good movie.
My mind works in compartments and each thing in my life has its designated space and for me [most of the time] this works. I am not an emotional person. I don’t have emotional responses unless I’ve made a conscious decision to.
I’m sure you are wondering what this has to do with anything.
TJ Klune…Wolfsong.
THIS BOOK DESTROYED ME.
Chewed me up, spit me out, slapped my ass and made me its bitch… destroyed me.
Me.
Heartless. No soul. Never read a shifter book before.
Even now I’m not sure if I can put together words to do this story justice. To say it was the right time and the right place for me would undermine the beautiful work TJ created. I went in cold with no expectations. The cadence with which he tells the story is understated and simple in a way that at the beginning you easily mistake it as a style of writing. It’s not until you are further along you realize it’s intentional and the poetic flow of the story. For me, it was as if the style was its own character in the book.
My lip quivered. What was that? Is it? Cue the single tear falling down my cheek. I felt like the Grinch when his heart grows three sizes (never cried in the movie btw).
Thus began the textfest of alerting those nearest and dearest that a heart actually does exist within my walls and they have to read this book. Like nownownow and immediately I needed feedback that I wasn’t the only one to experience this response. They came pouring in. All confirming it wasn’t just me. My friend Ari called to tell me she called her husband to come home from work because she just needed to be held after she read the last page.
This was my first TJ Klune read. I have since read TJ’s Tell Me It’s Real series. Hysterical. Shake the bed, waking loved ones up hysterical. Exactly what I needed after being destroyed.
