Reviewed by Taylin

TITLE: The Other Brother

AUTHOR: Jax Calder

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 285 Pages

RELEASE DATE: January 12, 2022

BLURB:

What happens when you fall for the one person you can’t have?

Ryan has had seventeen years of being compared to Cody, part of his toxic fractured family, so you’ll forgive him for some epic eye-rolling when it comes to Mr Perfect. Although not related to him by blood, Cody has always been annoying background noise in Ryan’s life. It doesn’t help that Cody’s a high achieving musician, while Ryan’s life ambition doesn’t extend past catching the next wave.

One summer changes everything. It’s the summer when circumstances collide, and Cody and Ryan end up spending time together at Cody’s family’s beach house. It’s the summer Ryan teaches Cody to surf and Cody teaches Ryan to play guitar. It’s the summer when they become friends.

And then more than friends.

But when summer ends, Cody and Ryan are forced back to reality, where they must hide their relationship from their warring family members. And as tragedy strikes and family secrets buried deep in the past worm their way to the surface, their relationship is threatened. Can their feelings, which began in the summer sun, survive the winter ahead?

REVIEW:

Ryan is a party boy. Cody is an overachiever. Inter-family politics means that they are connected by marriage – not by blood. But family is messy, and the two have always been unfavorably compared. Thus, Ryan continually avoided Cody… until a party where their lives collided and a new understanding between them emerged.

From the off, I’ll say that I found this story so engaging that I barely made any review notes.

The Other Brother is told in the first person, present tense, entirely from Ryan’s viewpoint. As such, I saw the world and the people within it, in his words, which were most entertaining and occasionally heart-wrenching, in a way that I’m sure many will relate. While there is some picture building of the physical world, much of Ryan’s views are personality-driven. His turns of phrase made me smile many times.

Cody is an incredible musician with an aversion to raisins. He also lives within a strict household. His parents want him to be the best he can be, to the point of being pushy, wishing to live vicariously through their son. He is as uptight as Ryan is laid-back. Their support of each other encourages one to lighten up, and the other, to take life a little more seriously. It was a lovely thing to witness.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that because, as said earlier – family is messy – particularly this one. This aspect of the story is superbly told, and my words here cannot do justice to the parental and sibling, caught in the middle, arc, so I’m not going to try.

The more expansive cast is varied in personality, yet few, which allowed me to track who was who and their associated stories effortlessly.

I found The Other Brother to be a delightful read. Its pace was one that I easily followed, not too slow, not too fast, and it was filled with events that made me laugh and shed a tear.

RATING:

BUY LINK: 

Amazon