Brothersong

See, the problem with listening to audiobooks at work is that you have to keep your sobbing down so your coworkers don't come over to ask why you're crying at your desk and you don't have to explain that the gay werewolf book series got to you.

I've never had a brother so whenever I come across media that focuses on that kind of relationship I'm always kind of intrigued and maybe a little envious. This particular flavor - adult brothers coming to terms with a now-dead parent's failure earlier in their lives and how that affected them in unique ways - is absolutely rife for drama, and Brothersong delivers on that front. The family that's acted as a sort of anchor throughout this entire series is finally given a POV protagonist in the final entry in Carter, the oldest of three brothers. We hit upon the same themes of self-sacrifice, being left behind, and simultaneously loving and hating the same person at the same time that we've seen before.

Of course, this being the last book in a series, a lot needs to get wrapped up, and I feel that maybe the smaller, more "localized" plot for this book kind of got swallowed up and pushed aside in favor of the overarching plotline that sucked all the oxygen out of the room when the big bad shows up. I wish we'd gotten more time with this protagonist alone or in smaller scenes, rather than feeling like he was just a vessel to view a big setpiece climactic battle through.

There are valid complaints about this series (dearth of female characters, larger-than-necessary cast, forced humor that feels unearned), but damned if it doesn't have heart. You'll be trucking along in a random chapter and then some character will hit you with a devastating one-liner about love or forgiveness or just surviving all the shit they've been through and it tugs on the heartstrings in just the right way. It may not have been perfect, but I don't regret my time with these wolves and I'll be thinking about them for a while to come.