Book Review: "Like A Brother" by Nathanael Lessore

Kindle     Audiobook     Paperback

⭐ out of 5

It's been a while since I read and reviewed my last children's book but this first paragraph will still be the same as the last one, which says that each book I read and review starts off with the full 5 stars and I'm always hopeful that they will all still be stuck firmly in place by the time I close the back cover.  The most common reason for an otherwise 5 star book becoming a 4 star book is through the use of copyrighted and/or trademarked brands potentially without permission.  There has been one book so far that has had the star rapidly replaced thanks to a magic little sentence right at the back saying that the author had gained permission to use the brand name - it's only happened once so far in the hundreds of books that I've read and reviewed so far, but I'm always hopeful that it'll happen again and I'd love to read that magic little sentence again.

I was pre-approved by the publisher to read and review an ARC of this book a month before it was published.

Let's get going with the reading and reviewing shall we?

The buying information says that this book is for "11 years and up" and is 336 pages long which is too long for a middle-grade book unless it's a sci-fi or fantasy book, so the first star is already wobbly before I've even opened the book.  It also says that it's a "teen comedy" but 11 year olds aren't teenagers and I already don't know if this is a middle-grade or teen book!

I'm at the end of the second chapter and there have already been a couple of word choices that an 11 year old wouldn't understand and a mis-placed capitalisation that should have been picked up waaaay before the publisher put it into pre-publication circulation so the first star is already coming off at the end of the first page.

And now, on page 3, we've got two English football teams named, so the second star is already coming off... will I make it to the end of the first chapter without removing the third star??

I think the author is as confused about the ages of his characters as I am because they've just become teenagers, but the author hasn't said how long ago that was... was it this year?  Last year?  Longer than that?  According to my Kindle, I'm 2% of the way through the book and the utter confusion is making me take the third star off... there's 98% to go and only one star left before it officially becomes a DNF for me.

Less than a paragraph later and the author has used two celebrity names/brands which I can't see them giving permission for, so at only 2% and less than a chapter I'm removing the final star and declaring it another DNF unfortunately.