The Things a Brother Knows

"Boaz is Back."

Bookworm's Ranking - 2 Worms

Storyline - When Levi's brother, Boaz, returns from his time with the Marines, he hopes everything will be fine again. But his brother locking himself in his room isn't what he expected or the strange sounds coming from the other side of the door. When Bo starts borrowing Levi's computer, he wonders what his older brother is up to. Then Boaz leaves again and Levi decides to follow even though he has no idea where they are going or why.

Author - Dana Reinhardt

Publisher - Wendy Lamb Books (part of Random House, Inc)

Age Group - 17 and up

Content - Levi doesn't know where he stands but he eventually makes a decision and does something about it. He tries to be there for his brother but it is very difficult. For more than the first half of the book, each chapter had some sort of inappropriate stuff (boy/girl thing) or just plain mention of privet parts at least once but usually more (not all of them were mentioned in that way but it wasn't necessary). Levi almost spent the night with a girl but she says doesn't want to (but why she let her shirt come off first is beyond me). Levi also get drunk once and one of his friends goes to a Catholic school but is one of the worst behaving characters.

 Personal Opinion - Would have liked it more had it not taken so long to get to the main story (over half the book) and excessively toned back the inappropriate (hinting at teens having been together and stuff like that) junk and privet part mentioning. It was so much, something was brought up after going a few pages. I don't get what all that had to do with the story other than trying to make it realistic to teens but it didn't have to be that much or was necessary to the story or anything else for that matter. I found it just disturbing. When Levi was finally on the trip with his brother, it really toned back allot and I started to enjoy it. I even liked Levi's beginning romance until we got to the part where they almost slept together (was tempted to stop reading the book all together after that). But, the ending was really good and so beautiful. I would have loved the book for the ending and the growth of Levi in understanding his brother but I will never recommend this book for everything else that it contained.

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Links - Learn more about the book and author at: http://www.danareinhardt.net/things.html

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