Woman Reading

When I picked Whiskey & Charlie to read and review I didn’t realize that it was a book that was originally released in Australia. The synopsis alone made me pause and take a second look before snatching it up. If I had known it was an Australian book I wouldn’t have even had to pause. I don’t know what it is about authors from Australia… or what it is about me, I should say, that I fell so in love with the writing style.

There are some things in life we never feel ready for, that it’s only by doing them that we become ready.

Whiskey & Charlie was written with the type of slower pacing that I love. It’s not boring slow, it’s an intimate type of slow. Annabel Smith took the time to give you all of Whiskey and Charlie’s history, from about age 6 through to adulthood, the age that Charlie is as he tells the story. You find out why Charlie and Whiskey had a falling out, and what I really like about the book is that it doesn’t favor one brother over the other. I found myself equally pissed at the both of them. Normally that isn’t something that I would like in a book, I want a ‘hero’. In this case, though, I think I would have found it completely unrealistic if one brother had been ‘good’ and the other brother had been ‘bad’. They both had their own flaws unique to themselves, and Smith didn’t hold back. She lets them be douchebags to each other the way siblings can sometimes be douchebags to each other, sadly.

On the flip side, and the only reason why I couldn’t give Whiskey & Charlie 5 full skulls, was because the book focused the most on all the bad blood between the twins, and gave the readers very little love. Look, in the book Whiskey is in a horrible accident. It’s in the synopsis, right up at the top of this blog post, so not a big surprise. Whiskey is in really bad shape, and Charlie is feeling a lot of regret because he used to love his brother. A long time ago they were inseparable. Rather than tell us that they used to be so close I wish we’d actually read some of that. Even when you mostly can’t stand someone there are times and that you remember, even for a moment, why you loved them. I personally just wanted more of that. I am constantly preaching that when you have a book that is about such a sad subject there’s gotta be a balance of good stuff, there’s got to be something that I can cheer for and unfortunately there was just so much anger.

Still, despite my need for happy times, it was a really beautiful story. Charlie’s growth over the course of the story was wonderful to read. I think that it was a good representation of grief and regret. You rarely get a second chance to do it right, and Charlie really learned a hard lesson. The lesson that it’s important to forgive and never take your loved ones for granted.

A big thank you to to Sourcebooks and the author for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

See this and other reviews at Badass Book Reviews