John Rider

So well written. Raw real beautiful. It is infuriatingly wonderful making you try and tie multiple pieces together. The Book Thief was masterful but has the backdrop of WWII to make it bold and powerful. This is just a simple book about a broken family (and a broken but courageous brother) who somehow beat the love into one another after their mom dies and their father abandons them. I loved every quirky frail character for their joy in a life that makes no sense. The narrator is the true hero for keeping them all together but he never tries to take credit. He just does because what else was there to do. At the end it’s a book of brotherly love and it is great. Highly recommend it.

Interesting characters, interesting story that went no where. Really disliked the ending. And sometimes a character is the narrator (and we never find out who that character is) and sometimes there is no narrator.