I realise I probably didn’t enjoy The Brothers by SD Hinton as much as others because of my disinterest in all-things-war-related.

As a result I skimmed sections that talked about Jake’s time in the military. Thankfully – though there’s a lot of reference to Jake’s deployments (his experiences and the result of his injuries) – it doesn’t have much to do with the unfolding plot here, other than to explain why Jake and Tom haven’t seen each other for some time.