(NON-SPOILER)
I am very disappointed in this book. It had started off pretty strong and I was interesting right away and wanted to know what was going on. Unfortunately that interest went away pretty quickly because it took so long for the actual plot to begin. I was 40 percent through the audio book before the plot truly began. Plus when the plot began there were random side-plots thrown in like a random mini romance that didn't go anywhere and was not needed.. Oh yeah did I forget to mention the mystery was never solved by the MC! Instead of the MC solving it, it was conveniently wrapped up in the end in a very unsatisfying way. The MC is a whole other story. I thought she was sweet and just traumatized in the beginning but then she became annoying and kept forgetting that other people have feelings too. I actually hated her a little by the end cause it felt like I was being forced to think she was a good person but then shown she was just a narcissist. My favorite character was the best friend but we only saw her when the plot was going no-where and she had to come and physically push it forward.
As for the native peoples rep/ Inuit rep I cant say if it was accurate or not as I fit into neither of those categories so I would check for other people's reviews for commentary on that.
Overall, I left this book very frustrated and wishing it has been done differently.

The audio book narrator did a good job though and I do not think my experience was hampered by the way I consumed the story.

In this book we follow Bean as she has to navigate grief at the loss of her brother and come to understand where her spirituality rests. She never fully agrees with the pronouncement of the cause of death of her brother, Sam. As she does some research on her brother's fascination with the Inuit culture, she tries to meld his beliefs with the reality of his death.

Overall an okay book for me. It's always interesting to learn more about a culture I don't know. It can definitely be hard for anyone with a trigger for suicide. While I understand the need to get awareness out on this specific topic (won't say exactly what it is to avoid spoilers), the journey to that understanding didn't flow well for me. It felt like two different books even at times.

Also, I did not like the narrator in this book. I might have liked this story better if I hadn't had the narrator's voice in my head.

Thank you NetGalley for an Advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review.

Winter of the Wolf, by Martha Hunt Handler, narrated by Kelly Pruner.

This was a debut book by the author with all sales proceeds to go to the wolf conservation center (www.nywolf.org)! I was drawn to this book due to Midwestern location, the cover is awesome, the inclusion of the Inuit beliefs and that my nickname when I was a kid was Bean.

I was a little hesitant to read a book; Bean doesn't believe that her brothers death was suicide due to his adoption of Inuit beliefs. Most people (self included) want to put blinders on in regards to the topic of suicide. Regardless of how/why there is a suicide (including drug overdose/other, intentional or not) suicide rips a family apart and is devastating to everyone involved. It touches even those who only remotely knew the person.

In the slightest way, this book reminded me of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson in that a female high schooler is investigating a closed police investigation.

The narrators "dialog voice" for Bean did not match the character and that disappointed me; otherwise the narration was very good.

In my opinion the book ended a bit too abruptly. This book was read courtesy of NetGalley Advance Read Copy; thank you to the author/Martha Hunt Handler. Its possible that the copy reviewed will be edited before final publication.

The Winter of the Wolf is a story about the tragic and untimely death of a teenage boy and how his family and friends work towards grieving and eventually accepting his loss.

17 year old Sam Kane's body is found in his room by his mother in an apparent suicide. Sam loved and had a strong belief in the Inuit culture and customs and lived his life according to those beliefs. He was a strong, fearless, intelligent, kind, spiritual person with a deep understanding, love and appreciation for Nature and everything that inhabited it. He loved life and wanted to experience everything that life and the world had to offer. He was in no way a depressed soul, hence, his apparent suicide comes as a shock to his family but they eventually learn to accept it. All except his 14 year old sister and soul mate Bean, whose intuition and heart refuses to believe that Sam could have killed himself. She is also upset that her father and two older brothers, seem to have easily moved on from this tragedy, while her mother has become a shell of her personality. So on her 15th birthday, Bean and her best friend Julie make a pact and decide to dig deeper. Using Sam's Inuit beliefs as a main guidance, they question family and friends, go through his belongings and even perform a Shamanic ritual to find out what exactly happened. Along with the closure she eventually gets, Bean also comes to accept as a certainty (something that she has constantly and intuitively felt) that even though Sam's physical journey in this world has come to an end, his spirit is still very much alive and thriving. She also realises that she has been unfair in her assessment of her family's reaction to this tragedy--every person has his/her own personal way of coping with tragedies. Through dialogue, they learn to appreciate and celebrate Sam's life and his achievements in its entirety, and appreciate each other, with the result that by the end of the book, the Kane family are much closer and happier as a family than they have ever been.

For me, the character that stood out was Sam. Even though he is alive for only a few pages, his strong, intense personality shines through which only gets stronger as each character reminisces about him later on. The writing and language is simple but very emotional and my favourite parts are definitely the chapters describing the Inuit's culture, Shamanism and the Shamanic ritual that Bean and Julie perform at the end to get in touch with Sam's spirit. Even though it's not my belief system, it was still very interesting to read about and the author manages to explain complex ideas about this native Indian culture in a manner that is easy to understand.

My thanks to NetGalley, the publishers Greenleaf Book Group and Greenleaf Audio and the author Martha Hunt Handler for both an e-ARC and audio-ARC of this book. I both read and listened to the book. The audio is narrated by Kelly Pruner and she has done a fine job. There is both crispness and clarity in her voice and pronunciation and I didn't have any problems with the new audio format that NetGalley has introduced.

P. S.: I am not sure if my review does any justice to the book, but it is worth a read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. It has been published in July 2020.

"Winter of the Wolf" by Martha Hunt Handler is a heart-wrenching story about grief, loss and bereavement, but also about family ties, the strength of friendship and the importance of our relationship with nature and with the world around us.
Bean, the protagonist, is coming of age in the shadow of her brother's supposed suicide. The novel follows her search for the truth and for a way to make sense of this tragedy in the months after Sam's death.
I really enjoyed the characters - so well-rounded that they just come alive in front of your eyes - and the plot, which is surprisingly full of twists and big reveals.
The language and style are perfect for the narration, very true to the character of a mourning 15-year-old girl.
The themes are darker than what you would generally expect from a YA novel (suicide, mental illness, sex, drugs, occultism), but they're handled in a very sensitive way, so kudos to the author for managing that near-impossible feat.
Overall, "Winter of the Wolf" comes across as a story about resilience and the rebuilding of severed relationships, rather than as a story about grief.

1.5/5 Stars
Reasons why I picked up this book:
-Inuit Representation
-Thriller
-Spiritual Actualization
-Dead Twin

Reasons why this book didn't live up to my expectations
-The representation wasn't bad, but it was a white boy who really loved this culture that wasn't his own. I think it's important to have characters like this but having a character who was actually Inuit as well would have been nice
-Not at all thriller, much closer to murder mystery/general fiction. Nothing was spooking or suspenseful, I didn't find any reason to want to keep listening
-All of the characters are way to open to questions. The main girl asks then stuff surrounding this murder and people just tell her, no pushing or lying to themselves about the truth
-Everyone is into character that has nothing going for them. We also fall into the age old characters aren't like normal people their age
-The character's weren't actually twins...
-The plot was too slow, and underdeveloped. I think the story could have picked up much sooner to make the mystery more real, and then had more suspenseful narrative development

I think if they had marked this as a story of grief and loss, most of my complaints would be gone, and my rating would be a lot higher - because that is what this story really is, a family getting over the loss of one of the children

Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Thank you to NetGalley, Martha Hunt Handler, Greenleaf Book Group Press, and Greenleaf Audiobooks for the opportunity to listen to Winter of the Wolf in exchange for an honest review.

Initially, I requested this audiobook for two reasons:
1) I love Inuit culture. I did a report on it in 5th grade after visiting Alaska and I currently incorporate Inuit mythology and language into my own writing.
2) I wanted to try out NetGalley’s new app, NetGalley Shelf. Reading on there seems okay, but I wanted to see how this whole audiobook thing worked (not well).

I enjoy listening to audiobooks in the car, while playing games, or while grading papers. I listened to the majority of this one while playing Minecraft. I had a lot of trouble with the app in terms of getting the book to download properly, having it lose my place, having to re-download because the download failed so many times …it was a bit of a mess. But hey, it’s a new thing, and it will improve! (The publisher sent me the e-book version as well so I could cross-reference and go back and see if I missed anything or just to reread a certain part).

Regardless, I found the talents of narrator Kelly Pruner to be absolutely fantastic. She has a great reading voice and really added to Bean’s character. Bean is a fifteen-year-old girl living in the states. After her brother’s supposed suicide, Bean and her friend dig a bit deeper, as that was just not the way Sam was at all. Her older brother, Sam, loved Inuit culture and wanted to have a burial in the way of that tribe. One of my draws to this book was the Inuit culture. While there were some interesting elements laced in, it felt like the cultural aspect fell a little flat and wasn’t quite fulfilled for Sam’s character the way it could have been.

Bean and her family deal with this loss, among the daily high school life of drama and friendship. I felt like the book ended in the wrong place, that it needed just a few more chapters. It is rather short, less than three hundred pages and about a six-hour listen. I enjoy the voice and writing style. When I look at the cover, I lean more towards children’s rather than young adult, but the tone and feel are definitely in the young adult category, addressing serious issues that many young adults face, such as dealing with the loss of a loved one, suicide, and family.

I enjoyed this book, but would caution who I recommend it to, as the wrong reader might struggle with some of the presented topics. I would certainly buy this book for myself or a friend, though I am not so sure about using NetGalley’s audiobook app again…^_^’

This book was bad. I finished it because I needed to know how bad. Cultural appropriation that goes unaddressed, poor writing ("I couldn't prolong this any longer"), teen characters that act like middle schoolers and talk like adults, and much more.

The story is about Bean and her family dealing with her brother Sam's apparent death by suicide. She and her mother were very close to Sam and are wrecked by his death. Bean refuses to believe it is a suicide and decides to do some amateur sleuthing with her best friend Julie.

All throughout, Bean talks about how Sam was really into "Inuit stuff" and Inuit beliefs-- most notably the mixing of ones blood with that of an animal one has killed. This feels like the only thing the author actually researched about Inuit belief systems and the rest of the book just seems to use it as a cool characteristic for Sam, and a plot point for overcoming grief. I was incredibly disappointed that there was no author's note or other information to shed some respect on the culture that is so blatantly used by white people in this book. There was an authors note, but SPOILER ALERT, it was about the dangers of Auto-erotic asphyxia which is was killed Sam (and sadly, the author's friend's son).

Bean's voice was both melodramatic to the point of feeling more like middle grade fiction, while at the same time her dialogue was what you would expect coming out of an adult's mouth. They also use the word shit profusely.

The narration was okay. It was really hard to tell Julie and Bean apart during dialog because they sounded almost exactly the same. It also sounded like sentence attributions were just copied and pasted to the end of pre recorded dialog.

Thank you Net Galley for a copy of this audio book. This book gripped me from the very start and I listened to it in one sitting. The concepts of what happens after death enlightened me, made me hopeful. Beautiful book.

Winter of the Wolf is written in the perspective of Bean Hanes. It starts off with a completely normal day, except for the fact that Bean felt like something was gonna go wrong that day. As the day progresses, Sam, her beloved older brother, meets an untimely death that looks to be a suicide. Bean, knowing her brother, believed that he would never do this and so she tries her best to find out what happened.

I appreciate how the author handled the deeper themes of loss, grief, and healing. Throughout the novel, we see how this tragic event can break a family, but also how they can learn to move on and heal rather than remain stuck in that dark mental state. And while I did believe the portrayals of grief and the actions it causes one to take, I thought it was interesting how everyone allowed Bean to do what she did. The consequences of her actions were really 50/50 like it could have led her down a dark path where she was just 100% convinced Sam would never commit suicide and wouldn't be able to move on from it or she would have been able to move on. However, I did appreciate how realistic this portrayal is of Bean's different stages of grief.

This is a quick listen with a solid performance from the narrator. Bean is the youngest of four children and the only girl. She's especially close to Sam, her older brother closest in age to her. The book opens with his sudden death - and explores Bean's own variety of mysticism, loosely blended in with Sam's obsession with Inuit traditions and beliefs. Set in a far northern Minnesota town, there's;s not a whole lot that feels very modern about this book (cell phones, computers, social media - it's all pretty absent here) and the mystery of Sam's death doesn't really come as the shock that I think it is intended to be.

Because so much of the book deals with grief, it is definitely a sad book - but I have to admit that I never once reached for the tissue as I listened. The book hovers around the lines of believability. making it difficult to really connect to it. It definitely gets a bit preachy - albeit in a general spiritual way that isn't often presented in this way in YA fiction. But the dialogue itself is where it really gets unbelievable - it rarely sounds authentic - despite the skill of the performer. A lot of the dialogue serves as a repository for information dumping and while there are a lot of actions made of grief - the discussions around this (especially in the aftermath) never strikes a pure chord. People just don't talk this way... I really expected to be more emotionally connected to the character and the story itself, because if there is a sub-genre to this one, I would say that falls under "emotional". The Minnesota police get the worst rap of all here, though in the wake of their "investigation". Maybe younger readers (the intended audience) would be more moved and less hung up on the unbelievable details - although, I am not sure that this will hold much appeal, to be honest.

I read a lot of books but I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like Winter of the Wolf before. The narrator, Bean, is a teenager. The youngest in a family of four and the only girl. When the brother she is closest to, Sam, kills himself after a family disagreement she is understandably devastated but is also clinging to the idea that his death is connected to Inuit beliefs. Alongside her best friend Julie,she attempts to find the answers.

I have to admit that I nothing at all about Inuit customs but it didn’t matter. I was swept along by Bean and her family’s attempts at coping with their loss. The emotions are raw and honest. You could see how they troubled to communicate with each other, through grief, guilt and denial.

You would think that this would be a depressing read but it isn’t. Some of it is everyday teenage life. Boys, friends, families. There are parts that she has to cope with at school that are different, the feeling of being ignored because people don’t know what to say, the comments from others who say they know what she is going through because they have experienced similar.

Alongside the learning to cope there is the description of the local community, the area and its wildlife. So different to life here and much of it sounds magical. I found that the part of the novel that concerns the Inuit customs was quite small but fascinating. Mixing human and animal blood was something I had never even thought about and it reminds the reader that there is a lot to learn about different cultures and beliefs.

A wonderful book that I would happily read again.

Winter of the Wolf is the first audiobook I listened to on NetGalleys new audio review addition! I was super psyched to get this. And the cover is just beautiful! I love Wolves and Pigs and all other animals..lol. But there is something just so regal about a wolf to me.

Bean, who is super close to her older brother Sam has just lost him to what seems like a suicide. Everything points perfectly to suicide from the way he died to some incidents leading up to his death. But something in Beans gut tells her this is not the case. So with the help of her friend Julie they start to sift through his life looking into his strong beliefs in Inuit Culture, his relationship with his recent ex girlfriend and his close friendship with his best friend Skip, who has seemed to pull a disappearing act the day after Sam died. She’s hoping something will provide with her answers as to what really happened and if he did take his own life what was the cause.

This was a very interesting and deeply sad book.
First off the grief that the entire family was going through was so well written and so palpable I caught myself sniffling through the book on more then one occasion. Especially in regards to Bean and her mom. It really was heartbreaking. Beans mom was just so sad and lost and Martha Hunt Handler wrote about her depression very convincingly. And as a reader I truly felt how much the family loved each other even though they were going through their own desperate struggles.
It also was truly a mystery as to what killed Sam. By the looks of everything it pointed to suicide all the way but there were facts brought up about Sams personality and the way he lived his life that I was thinking no way, something sinister MUST have happened that night. So I was hoping Bean would get some real answers and the mystery would be solved. Which it does btw.
It was also really interesting to learn about the Inuit culture which I had never heard of. They have a very strong connection to nature and especially with animals. Sam accidentally kills a deer the night he dies in a car accident and to show respect he mingles his blood with the does. The Inuit never kill animals for sport only to sustain life.
The only problem I had with this book is the way Sam dies when we finally find out. There was all this build up and I just couldn’t believe he would go out like that. There is an author note at the end that explains why and some personal sentiments are attached to this, but the way the story starts out it just didn’t flow well. I guess real life doesn’t exactly either all the time though.

Narration:
Kelley Pruner did a really good job as the narrator. I easily believed the different characters she slipped into. The only thing I didn’t like was her tone when Bean spoke aloud. It was kind of a whiny voice.


Overall extremely interesting and sentimental read of a family trying to get over the grief of a loved one that I highly recommend.

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, 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, 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.

Winter of the Wolf tells an interesting story of grief and spirituality. It is a great introduction to the Inuit culture and their beliefs. The overarching mystery also keeps the reader interested through the end of the book. The overall story of Winter of the Wolf is very intriguing. It becomes a mystery right off the bat when Bean wakes up and tries to remember the day before. This leads to a mystery that ultimately gets resolved. Although the ending could be considered a bit underwhelming (see notes below from the author), the answer to the mystery ends up being the secondary topic of the book. The main topic is more about Bean’s spirituality and what she ultimately learns from her brother’s beliefs. Although it may not be for everyone, this is an educational, intriguing book for older teens.

This book was not what I was expecting. When I read the description of this book I decided I wanted to read it because I was interested in the reference to Inuit culture. A few years ago I read Confessions of an Igloo Dweller: Memories of the Old Arctic which is a non-fiction book by a man who lived with the Inuit people for an extended period of time. Coincidentally the man who wrote that book is named Sam. Because I enjoyed that book so much I decided to give a fiction book about Inuit culture a go. I really did enjoy this book, the spiritualism is so interesting. But it must be mentioned that this is a very somber read. Since it's not a spoiler, the whole of this book focuses around Sam's apparent suicide as experienced by his little sister and her inability to accept it as a suicide. The book has a sort of magical realism feel to it. All in all I thought it was well written, a good book but it's not something to read if you are looking for a light book or a particularly happy one. There are some feel good moments but they are few and far between in this book.

Trigger Warnings: Suicide

Winter of the Wolf follows 15 year old Bean as she navigates her life after the loss of her beloved brother. While to most the answer seems clear, that Sam took his own life, Bean’s intuition tells her to dig deeper.

Winter of the Wolf is a well versed novel that explores hard topics like suicide, grief, depression, and spirituality.

At first, the time line seems a bit confusing. We go from the incident just happening to Bean talking about it as if it happened years ago. The wording just seemed off. The book is intended for a YA audience but some parts felt very juvenile.

Overall, the story was interesting and touched beautifully on hard topics.

This book evoked a lot of strong emotions. It was heart wrenching going through the grieving process with this family. Sam, one of 4 children is found dead, the police and the rest of the family believes that it was a suicide but Bean who was closest to her brother thinks it was something else. As she struggles with what happened and tries to process through the grief she enlist the help of her best friend. Through interviews with Sams friends Bean learns more about Sam but she still doesn't believe he committed suicide. Sam had strong Inuit beliefs and she can't reconcile them with what happened.

Bean's family is also struggling, her father who freaked out on both Sam and Bean right before this happened is trying to push everything away, her mother won't get out of bed and isn't taking the medication she was prescribed, her brothers seem to be going about their lives. During her investigation Bean learns more about her family and this builds a stronger bond between them all.

Through investigating Sam and learning more about his beliefs and other spiritual practices the girls decide to perform a shamanic ritual that they believe will help them know if Sam is still with them. This ceremony is beautiful and the aftermath brings the family even closer.

I really liked this book and the big reveal at the end. While I didn't see it coming I agree it is a very under reported problem. If you have a teen who is going to read this book I would suggest reading it first or at least at the same time so that a conversation can happen about this reveal. Regardless of how difficult that conversation may be it is important.

I guess I thought this book was more a fantasy type of book but it is not. It kept my interest and the narrator was good but it got a little weird. I guess the whole idea is to bring awareness to people. I get it. I just wasn't expecting that. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for my audiobook copy. I also received the e-book from a Goodreads Giveaway.

I couldn't get into this one. I truly feel that it has nothing to do with the book itself. I think it was the audio that made it hard for me to stay connected with the book.
I did not like that narrator of this book. She was too flat for me. There was no feeling in her voice. I think I will try and read the actual book when this one come out, cause the topic really did interest me.