My Brother, Finch by Kate Gordon

Title: My Brother, Finch

Author: Kate Gordon

Genre: Mystery

Publisher: Riveted Press

Published: 3^rd July 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 200

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Finch and Wren were as close as a brother and sister can be. When he vanished, when they were nine years old, her world cracked in two. Finch was never found. On the same day that Finch disappeared, another girl was lost, too. Her name was Ava. Her parents were rich tourists, from Sydney. Ava’s story got all the media attention. And Finch was forgotten. But not by Wren. Never by Wren. Three years on, Finch is still with her, whispering in her ear, guiding her through life. As Wren begins high school and forms a new, bewildering friendship with a mysterious girl called Freddie, Finch is there, urging her on. To go bolder. To go braver. To grab life with two hands. When another girl goes missing – a strange girl called Johanna – Wren feels compelled to search for her. To her surprise, Freddie does, too. The two of them try and piece together who Johanna is and why she ran away. Or did she run away? Was the truth more awful? And was it all tied together with what happened to Finch and Ava? My Brother, Finch, is a story of family, of loss, of friendship and of grief, and of what it truly means to let go and move on.

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Kate Gordon’s middle grade novels are often filled with heart, dealing with big topics for younger readers in ways that are accessible for them. In one of her latest books, grief and a desire to uncover what happened. But things are hard for Wren, who has lost her best friend. Who has spent a year hoping Finch would come back and fix the whole in their family. But ever since he disappeared, he’s been forgotten by everyone, because another girl disappeared on the same day. A girl called Ava who got all the media attention. And nobody ever knew what happened to Finch.

This novel is part mystery, part exploration of grief and acceptance, straddling an area that isn’t often explored in middle grade fiction the aftermath of a crime or death, where we see how the family is affected by what happened. It’s told trough Wren’s perspective with a strong voice that pushes us through the novel, and gets into why Wren wants to find Finch, because of the guilt she carries about the last day she saw him. The day that changed her world forever. But Wren isn’t alone. She has Freddie helping her, and there’s a ghost of a girl hanging around – who is she? Does she have something to do with Ava and Finch?

It’s all very slow, very deliberate because things need to move slowly in this one. Everything feels like a deliberation with a depth to the story that shows how grief can affect children, and how it can be overlooked. The relationship between Freddie and Wren grows throughout the novel as they try to solve the mystery of their missing siblings and the ghostlike girl, as well as examining how people respond to crime and grief.

Why is this important? Because it acknowledges that children experience and understand more than we think they do. It shows that they feel loss just as deeply as adults, and that this intensity can drive them to imagine a dead family member or long to find out what really happened to them. It does have a dark aspect to it, dealing with death and mental health which may be tough for some readers. It’s focus on mental health alongside the mystery is what gives it its gravitas and sense of foreboding at times, but also a sense of hope for Wren. Even though I could sense what had really happened and what the outcome would be, I still wanted things to end happily, and for Wren to find Finch.

It also played with the lost child in the bush myth that is prevalent in Australia, showing that it does happen and sometimes, you may ever really find out what happened. In doing so, it shows why people feared the bush when they first came here, because of its unpredictability, or at least what they saw as unpredictable. And it’s about Wren trying to make sense of the world without her brother, the person she always did things with.

At its heart, it is about friendship as well, and that we bond over different things in life. That different connections are what can inform how we live in the world and speak with people. It speaks through Wren’s emotions and brings the story to life, ensuring that it encapsulates the reality that some mysteries will never be solved.