Swing

He gave the male characters too many traits and interests and the lone female character, and love interest, was not given any traits or personality. After 5 of his books, I would say he struggles with writing female characters well. There was too much going on here and it took a long while to get over the initial silliness of proving how different Walt & Nate are and settling into a story. The abrupt turn at the end seemed to shock people. I saw it coming but it still felt unearned and the brother's character was unexplored. Think if PTSD/war/race trauma was where he wanted to go, then he needed to weed out at least one other element, either baseball, jazz, or the relationship advice/woohoo women. I'm not sure what kids are hanging in past the first few chapters to read this.