trisha_thomas 's review for:

The Removed by Brandon Hobson
2.0

"I'm building a monster," Edgar told him excitedly. He held up his Lego creature and roared.
"Little brother," Ray-Ray said, "there are enough monsters in this world."


This was definitely an odd one. It's a story about a family struggling to live with the lost of a beloved family member. Told from 3 alternating POV - mother, sister and brother. There is also another POV, a sort of folklore narrator that is telling you stories intermixed between the other chapters. Each family member's story is odd. They have taken wide turns in their lives since Ray-Ray was murdered and, this year in particular, they seem to be struggling.

But I found the sister's POV to be very list like - first she did this then this. I read a few paragraphs where it detailed what she ate, where she sat, a game she played then went for a smoke. The mother's POV was a little easier - she's taken in a foster child, Wyatt and sees a lot of similarities to her son, Ray-Ray.

The brother, by far, was the oddest of the chapters. He seems stuck in a town after following a stranger there. The chapters are slow with little detail until pretty late to really tell you what's going on. Instead it's almost in a drug or sleep-deprived haze and very little of it seems to make sense.

I wish I'd connected better with this story but I just found it disjointed and odd.