Book Review: The Good Brother

Book: The Good Brother by E.L. Chen

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Publisher: ChiZine Publications

Description:

Tori Wong is starting over. She’s fled home to do all the things she’s never done before. Like go out on weeknights, flirt with boys, and live out of the shadow of her overachieving brother, to whom her parents always compare her—even though he’s dead. But reinventing yourself isn’t as easy as it seems. Especially during the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, when traditional Chinese believe that neglected spirits roam the earth. Three ghosts return: her vengeful brother Seymour, and ambitious Vicky and meek Mui-Mui, herself at age seventeen and eleven. How can you start a new life when you are literally haunted by the past?


Rating: 4 stars

Review:

It's Ghost Month and 21 years old Victoria "Tori" Wong is being haunted by her older brother Seymour's ghost. After days of following her around tormenting her, she finally gave in to his ghostly demands, of burning the hell money. But doing that was supposed to make him leave, instead two more ghosts appeared. They were ghosts of her younger self, a version of her when she was ten (Mui-Mui) and the other when she was 17 (Vicky).

The Good Brother had an interesting story but at times it's a bit gloomy. I think Tori's life was very miserable long before the ghosts showed up. It started to make me wonder if maybe she manifested them because she was so disappointed with the way her life was going. Another thing she was tired of was living in her brother's shadow and would like to finally live her own life. But her parents want her to go back to college to become a doctor as her brother was planning to do.

It's hard to imagine but the ghosts were making her life even more unbearable than before from them causing problems at her job at the bookstore to crowding her at home, everything was a mess.

When I started reading this I thought man is this gloomy and I almost decided to stop reading it. I don't know why I continued, maybe it was in the hopes that the story would perk up a bit but really I kept reading because I wanted to know why she was being haunted and also to see if she would finally start living her life.

I found that the doom, gloom and dreariness had a point in this story because although she didn't want to admit or deal with it. Tori was dealing with a lot from the pressure of her parents to live up to their expectations to trying to figure out who she was now since she was no longer Mui-Mui or Vicky. She was at a crossroads so to speak and the ghosts just added to her misery. It seemed as if she was running away from her problems but the ghosts were something she could not run away from.

This surprised me because I thought it was going to be one big bleak story but it was more than that. I'm glad I didn't stop reading, because I would have missed the importance of Tori's ordeal. With all the dreariness this does have a happy ending in a way with Tori's life starting to go the way she wanted it to.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would although there were things that made me a little mad but in the end it wasn't a bad read. Despite the heaviness of the story it was a quick read and the writing was fast-paced and emotional.