Whiskey & Charlie

Whiskey & Charlie

by Annabel Smith

Genre: Fiction

Synopsis: Whiskey and Charlie might have come from the same family, but they'd tell you two completely different stories about growing up.  Whiskey is everything Charlie is not-bold, daring, carefree-and Charlie blames his twin brother for always stealing the limelight, always getting everything, always pushing Charlie back.

When they were just boys, the secret language they whispered back and forth over their crackly walkie-talkies connected them, in a way.  The two-way alphabet [Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta] became their code, their lifeline.  But as the brothers grew up, they grew apart.  By the time the twins reach adulthood, they are barely even speaking to each other.

When Charlie hears that Whiskey has been in a terrible accident and has slipped into a coma, Charlie can't make sense of it.  Who is he without Whiskey?  As days and weeks slip by and the chances of Whiskey recovering grow ever more slim, Charlie is forced to consider that he may never get to say all the things he wants to say.

from the back of the book

Review:  This book's description intrigued me because of the twin connection.  But this book didn't deliver for me.  Each chapter is titled with the two-way alphabet and something in that chapter has to do with that word.  Some of it seemed too contrived to me and it made the book too choppy.  At times the chapters seemed like individual short stories that were supposed to be part of a larger story but they just didn't flow together.  From the description I thought we would have read about how Charlie and Whiskey were close and how they drifted apart but very little time was spent on their childhood.  There were parts when they were preteens and then adults but that was about it.  I wasn't really ever sure about what really caused the riff between them.  Another problem I had with the book was Charlie's character, well actually Charlie's and Whiskey's characters.  Charlie seemed like a spineless and selfish person and Whiskey was arrogant and unlikable.  Charlie did change some in the book but not enough.  He did become reflective but he still seemed fairly shallow.

Rating: 2.5 stars