Book Review- Brother/Sister

By Sean Olin

Published by Razorbill

Released on June 9, 2011

Source: Publisher

4 Stars- Really enjoyed this one, a lot!

Synopsis (From Penguin): Will and Asheley have a troubled past. Their father left them when they were little, and their mother has just been carted off to an alcohol treatment center. Now, they have the house to themselves, and an endless California summer stretching out before them. Through alternating perspectives, they tell the story of how and why their lives spun violently out of control - right up to the impossibly shocking conclusion you'll have to read for yourself to believe.

Brother/Sister was crazy twisted, I was not expecting it to mess with my head as much as it did. It left me thinking about it way after I was done with it, I was trying to make dinner and kept itching to go back and read the last few pages again.

The synopsis doesn’t give much away and there’s a reason for that, I won’t say much about what really goes on in the story so I won’t spoil it for you, just know that there’s a lot of things that you just don’t see coming and it begins to turn darker as the story goes along. Also if you’re afraid of it being about incest don’t worry, it’s not. The book is told from the point of view of both Will and Asheley, they seemed to be in police custody and narrating their story about what happened from the beginning, before their alcoholic mother got taken to rehab and they were left alone. Will and Asheley have pretty much fend for themselves since their father left them after the divorce with their mother. Will has some serious issues, he’s got a crazy temper and just snaps at people all of a sudden, he’s a loner, his peers make fun of him and he’s very antisocial, like seriously the scary type. He also feels that he’s the only one that can protect his little sister from everyone that tries to get too close to her, he thinks everyone is after her and he soon begins to take that to the a whole new level thinking that he needs to get rid of whoever might be a threat to her. This crazy thoughts of his start a whole chain of events that just keeps escalating and Will can’t seem to be able to stop. His narration of what happened and his thoughts begin to seem exaggerated and insane. While you’re reading the story you are thinking that he’s definitely gone crazy, he’s taking it way too far and is losing control fast, the only one that seems to be able to help him is Asheley, but she soon becomes afraid of him too and has no idea how to stop it.

I wanted to feel sorry for Will and Asheley because they had horrible parents and their childhood wasn’t great, but I just couldn’t. I knew that Will was damaged and Asheley was all he had since he was a kid, he felt the need to be the man and protect her but he kept making so many mistakes, and pushing everyone out, even after she kept trying to get him to become a bit more normal, that I just didn’t feel anything for him. This book was definitely captivating, in its own twisted way. I found it really hard to put down, there’s just things that you never see coming and I just needed to know how it was all going to end because it just gets so out of control that you have no idea what will happen to these two and how they end up getting caught. The ending was insane! I was left with my mouth open screaming “WHAT?!!!” and flipping the pages back and forth. I felt a little too wired by that ending and couldn’t stop thinking about the whole book and what I had just read, it was great how the author messes with your head like he was playing some sort of prank on you. I love books that make me shriek the “EEKS!” and “WTHs” all the way through and leave me thinking about them long after reading them. Be warned that there is a lot of language and plenty of f-bombs through the whole novel. There also won’t be any romance in this one, but you definitely don’t miss it, it’s a bit more of a psychological thriller that’s so engrossing you won’t want to put down.