Brothersong

This book DEHYDRATED me. I spent the first 1/4 of it in tears and a few more parts besides. I was a bit too invested in all the lives of the Bennetts and Klune's style of writing really inspires a sense of melancholy that hit me hard. However, I did have some issues in hindsight.

While I absolutely adore this series as a whole, I felt that Carter was a bit short changed in this book in comparison. We spend all of the last book from Robbie's disjoined POV, with Carter and the timberwolf that follows him everywhere (later known to be Gavin) as side characters and then we're hit at the very end with this dramatic climax culminating in Livingstone and Gavin leaving. The afterword included in that book dropped the reader in the middle of Carter's story and was pretty powerful but then that scene is left out of this book, assuming the reader already knows about it from that afterword (and is referenced in passing during this book). Livingstone is barely mentioned after they leave the cabin in Minnesota, with all of the action with him vs. the witches happening “off screen” while the Bennetts and their town basically go about their normal lives. The witch that betrays them is very anticlimactic and is just a repeat of the battle from the other books, with even the characters themselves mentioning how everything keeps repeating.
While reading, I was interested in everything as it was happening but thinking back on the series, we're left with a lot of questions and it seems like Klune was himself unsure how to write about Livingstone and how to end the book and the series.

I just hope this isn't the last we get from the Bennetts.