“Brother” By: Ania Ahlborn - Book Review

Four twisted, demented, loved every second of it stars! I have not read much horror before, but it sounded a little similar to the next project I want to work on so I my interest was piqued. Also, I didn’t actually “read” the book. I listened to it on audio and I wish I wouldn’t have because as great as it was I think it would have been quite a bit better without a narrator trying to do voices for the characters. That being said, I really enjoyed this book right up until the last sentence.

Michael Morrow is a nineteen year old boy that lives in the Appalachian Mountains with his family which includes his mother who has a very morbid “hobby”, his dad that does whatever mama wants, his sister Misty Dawn, who is a preteen caught in a twenty year old body, and Ray or “Rebel” his brother, who is psychopathic and abusive. Michael also seems much younger than his age, but he is literally never around anyone other than his family. They don’t go to school and they don’t visit the same place twice so his social skills are horribly lacking. It is apparent he is a sweet soul, but his surrounding makes things confusing for him. His brother “Rebel” on the other hand, creeped me right out.

Nobody in town had ever heard someone scream bloody murder before, at least not really, but they kept on saying it like they had. That baby’s yellin’ it’s head off, screamin’ bloody murder in the cereal aisle. Reb said if they wanted to hear a baby scream bloody murder all they had to do was ask.

There was so much worse where that came from. We meet him as his mother is killing a young girl in the front yard. He and his sister don’t like it, but Misty Dawn like all the trinkets she gets from the girls. Michael has the job of skinning the bodies. And yes, they eat them.

It gave him nightmares, but he never complained. He only wished Momma would kill them while the sun was shining rather than waiting ‘till dark. If it didn’t matter how hard they screamed, Michael didn’t get what the difference would be. Day or night, dead was dead. At least during the day he wasn’t trying to sleep.

Rebel had a lot of hate for Michael and blamed him for a lot of his problems. Michael was adopted and Rebel never let him forget that he owed his life to this family and that they were supposed to stick together. He basically had Michael under his thumb and had him doing whatever he wanted of him. One day he brings him into town and they go to the record shop. He meets a girl there that he calls “Snow White.” The way he would talk about her was so sweet and genuine. He begins to become torn between her and Misty Dawn, who he promised to keep safe. He knows he will not ever be able to be with “Snow White” because of his family life. He definitely could never bring her home.

If that house were alive, it would feed on happiness and breathe out nothing but screaming and hate.

I enjoyed every bit of this book (besides the ending) and I would love to purchase a copy in the future so I can actually read it myself and not have it read to me. The only reason I gave this four stars instead of five is because of the ending. I loathe open endings like that. Even though you can guess, I want to know for sure one hundred percent. Since I don’t read much in this genre, maybe that’s the norm, but I hated it. This felt like so much more than a horror. This was a pretty emotional story and I was gasping quite frequently. I am curious about this authors other work because it definitely contained all the twisted dementedness that I crave in my stories.