Split

I read Split by Swati Avasthi. This book was about a 16 year old boy named Jace and his 23 year old brother Christian. When Christian was 16 he left because their dad would always hit their mom and Christian would take the hits for his mom. After Christian left Jace had to start taking the hits for his mom. One day Jace got feed up with his dad hitting him so he hit him back. After that Jace's dad got so feed up with him and kicked him out and said if he ever comes back he will kill the mom. Jace really wants his mom to come with him and not to take anymore of the abuse from his dad but all his mom gives him is a envelope with Christians address and money. He drives all night and finally gets from Chicago to new Mexico. Christian had changed his last name so that his dad couldn't find him and he also has a 30 year old girlfriend. All he has is $3.84 and a secret. His brother takes him in and they live with each other for about a month until Jace tells Christian his secret. He had a girlfriend back in Chicago and one night when he thought she was cheating on him Jace took her into an ally and started beating her up. The entire reason Christian left was to get away from abusers and when he found out what Jace did he kicked him out. In the end Christian forgives him because he did something their dad never had done, admit what he did was wrong. Christian tells Jace how he keeps from hitting people of losing his cool, he goes for runs. The book ends with them running at 5 in the morning and living in their new apartment. I do not like the ending becuase i wish that it dive more into his mom trying to leave his dad and more about Jace and his brothers relationship. The book also talked about Jace and how he fell in love with Dakota but didn't want to date her becuase he was scared he would do the same thing to her as he did to Lauren (his girlfriend in Chicago). I wish that they talked less about Jace and Dakotas relationship becuase it didn't have much meaning except it shows that he is aware of what he did to Lauren and never wanted to do it again. I would recommend this book, it was very good and Swati Avasthi did a very good job describing why the mom could never leave the dad and all of the abuse.