Ask Him Why

I will start this by saying I wish I could give this book two different ratings. The first part of the novel was an easy 2 possibly verging on 1 for me in some places. Everything after is a 4, bordering on 5 (that ending!). If you are the type that can plod steadily along on a not very straight road to get their reward, I promise a very juicy carrot at the end of it.

An older half-sibling makes a decision while deployed overseas that has severe ramifications for the rest of his family, with a particular focus on his younger brother and sister. As the alternating point-of-view characters chapter by chapter until the epilogue, everything that happens in the story filters through their perspectives. This created a few huge problems for me as a reader.

It's presented like the siblings' older selves are recounting things. That really isn't a thread that's kept up throughout and when we are introduced to the siblings as those older selves later...they don't really match up all that much either. The level of sarcasm and jadedness at even the younger age also feels a little out of place. There are some amazing lines, but when it's heaped on again and again, the feeling becomes redundant.

The main issue I took with the first part though is just how much the same the two points of view are. The voices, tone, perspective of the world of the two siblings felt almost homogenous despite the obvious differences of gender and age. I often had to go back to the chapter header to make sure I was understanding which sibling I was reading. After the age up into adulthood, they finally started feeling like truly separate voices.

What this novel really does have going for it though is that despite a rough beginning, I did feel paid off for reading this in the end. Despite the question in the title, I definitely wasn't still asking why at the end but where. Where can I find my own emotional support Scotsman?