A review by maketeaa
What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

closing this book and seeing the title again feels like completing a puzzle. because the whole book reads exactly like that -- a short collection of things the narrator does not want to think about. the story opens with the unnamed narrator and her twin brother as children, and takes us through the entirety of their complicated relationship through adulthood, the narrator's desire to keep her brother close, to not drift away, and her brother not feeling the same way. the overall story reminded me a lot of a little life, particularly the sentiment of loving someone who are fighting their own battles with mental health, and i guess because of that it did sometimes feel like there was nothing that really hit me that hard. but i can appreciate from a literary standpoint the ideas that arise from their relationship as twins, of one being 'smaller' than the other, the older one needing to be 'destroyed' first. i wish the themes in this were explored a little deeper, especially the recurring idea of taking up space in a person's life. but i did enjoy the overarching exploration of disappearance, of the right to erasure, of what it is like to want to disappear when another person so strongly wants you to stay. to truly disappear means being unable to come back -- so can the narrator's brother disappear leaving her behind?