After a long and exhausting time reading, I need to read something light and funny. I just finished reading a book that took way too long for me to read. I could have abandoned it, but wanted to soldier on and finish. I finally did after well, two months. It just fell flat. (I’ll review it later.) I was easily distracted and kept doing other things. Almost any and everything except reading the book. I’m just glad I’m finished with the book. I thought I would be more engrossed in this book than I was. I had the intention of reading a specific book after this (with an assumed heavy subject matter), but I’m opting for something a little lighter. Yes, I’m coupling it with also reading a memoir, which is not exactly light, but the engagement level is a breath of fresh air, which I really need in a book right now.
Category: Escape
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (A Book Review)
Eleanor Bennett is dying. She lost her husband, her children aren’t speaking to each other, and her daughter is disconnected from the family. This is not how she wants things to end. Eleanor solicits the help of a close family friend, Mr. Mitch, to record her telling the story of her life and for it to be played upon her death.
Byron and Benny thought they knew their mother. After hearing their mother’s story, in her words, everything they ever knew was not as it appeared. They are trying to understand how this newly revealed information will lead them forward.
Although it was quite lengthy and a little disjointed at times (the “seemingly random” characters as well as the constant era changes), it was a good book. It’s a rich story that kept me engaged. Wilkerson strategically brings everything full circle in the end. The journey had many excursions, but the destination was worth it.
Rating 8/10
Hush Delilah by Angie Gallion (A Book Review)
Delilah Reddick is a woman trapped in her own life. She’s in a brutal cycle of abuse at the hands of her husband, Chase. Her best friend Carmen constantly pleads for her to leave, but it’s not so simple.
As Delilah folds into herself and examines her life both present and past, she sees a very small glimpse of a silver lining in the unraveling of the tight grip of the abuse. However, exactly what that silver lining will cost, is a thought that shakes Delilah to her core. There is her son Jackson, who would be collateral damage in it all.
This book delves deep into multiple perspectives of what abuse and the decisions linked to it looks like, depending on what a person’s viewpoint about it is. It explores how an abused person wrestles with vaccillating and ruminating thoughts and the difficulty in deciding weighty matters.
Delilah’s inner guilt leaped through the pages. I felt her guilt of how she found herself in what she viewed as a very pitiful place in her life. It appeared most of her guilt involved what she viewed as a betrayal of her own self.
As a reader, it was important to know the delicacy of the situation and not judge her, but to feel compassion. This book opened my heart and made it sensitive to inner battles that others may have to deal with, sometimes with very arresting characteristics. The author really captured the essence of the whirlwind, the fog, and the ties of a toxic relationship. It was a great book.
Rating: 10/10
The Two Lives of Sara by Catherine Adel West (A Book Review)
Sara King, an expectant mother, appears in Memphis under the cloak of hidden truths to start life anew. She arrives at a boarding house ran by a fiesty but warm matriarch named Mama Sugar. Shortly after Sara arrives, she gives birth to a son she names Lebanon.
They’re embraced as family by Mama Sugar, her husband Mr. Vanellys, their grandson William, the boarders and some of the people in community. Sara’s hard exterior starts to soften. It all but vanishes when she starts a romance with William’s teacher, Jonas.
Sara’s embraces her newfound joy. But when the past collides with the present, it brings with it the possibility of forever altering the future for Sara and the people in her life both now and in the future.
There were so many profound moments in this story. The writing was impeccable and poignant. This story will stay with me always. Some of the quotes that both moved me and gave me pause were as follows:
“Well, what’s done is done but I found out when people go through hard places, they don’t need tough’ an they don’t need coddling. They need mercy.” ~Mr. Vanellys
“Friendships are strange evolving collections of laughter and fights and secrets, this rarified brew of humanity you choose to share with another person. And I want that again. To feel close to someone. To share with someone.” ~Sara
“So if you struggle or see someone struggling, seek understanding. You don’t know the wars people fight on the inside. No one save the Lord knows about those inside battles.” ~ Sara’s mother.
“No one likes to own the harm they did to others, it makes them hurt in a forever kind of way.” ~ Sara
“Everything we go through reshapes us, makes us new.”~ Cora
Rating: 10/10
So We Can Glow by Leesa Cross-Smith (A Book Review)
This is a great collection of stories covering the nuances and idiosyncrasies of womanhood. It explores their emotions, loves, memories, and reasons of why some women choose some things that govern their lives. Below are some of the stories that I liked most.
We Moons: I loved the sheer honesty of womanhood. It was beautifully written. It reached deeply into intricate parts of being a woman.
Pink Bubblegum and Flowers: Is about the awareness of the harshness of life’s circumstances layered right beneath the innocence of youth. The sweet smell of bubblegum and flowers provided a calming balm for the less than ideal situation at hand. It cemented the mutual love in the midst of chaos.
Knock Out The Heart So We Can Glow: This story represented the deep longing of a woman wanting love in her very specific way.
Some lines that were poignant were: “She was drawn to the dusty items no one else seemed to love.”
“She asked her husband if he remembered when she was eating pineapple and started to cry because she was alive and some people weren’t. Reminded him of that morning after church when her hair was baptism-wet. How she sat at the kitchen table, born again, drowning in the sunlight.”
“Her husband was a good man and she loved him, but he didn’t know how to be special, how to glow. She said it was pretty simple and she’d teach him. There was no big secret. You just had to let the things in your heart get real dark first.”
Two Cherries Under A Lavender Moon: This was about the sweetness of fantasy love and the heady, fast, and swelling feeling of which that love provides.
Boy Smoke: This story was about a wife discovering her husband’s affair and kicking him out of the house, while his students were driving pass their home. Some memorable lines from this story were: “Her face looks like a country song: smudged black eyeliner, red wine teeth.” “He’s Max and I’m Nina,” Coach’s wife says, snapping to normal in the way that only women can when they’re holding up the Earth. Nina says thanks to us and smokes at the front of the car, standing there like a crownless queen in streetlamp light.”
Dandelion Light: This is a sweet account of acquaintances slow dancing towards reconnection.
I absolutely loved the lyrical and poetic flow of how these stories were written. It captured the essence of each subject of each story. It was a beautiful collection of stories. This is the second body of work I read from this author and it was another great reading experience.
Rating: 9/10
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow(A Book Review)
Escaping the shattered home life she shared with her parents, ten-year old Joan relocates to Memphis with her younger sister, Mya and their mother, Miriam. Memphis is quite the experience and wide-eyed, Joan takes it all in, this magical, colorful place.
When they all arrive in Miriam’s childhood home, a home built by love, Joan feels the weight of a thing in this very safe haven they’ve escaped to. Her artwork is her balm for the powerful weight she’s carrying from years ago.
Joan melts into the fabric of her community, which includes people like her sassy aunt August and the ever present elders Miss Dawn and Miss Jade. She is surrounded by love, secrets, and wisdom. It ushers her into an understanding of both her family’s past and her own identity and purpose.
I absolutely loved reading this story. I especially appreciated the lyrical language the author used. It was a well written and poignant story about fierce women and their life choices and journeys. It was a refreshing experience to be overtaken by such a rich story.
Rating: 10/10
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough (A Book Review)
Louise is a single mother of a young son. She lives a self-proclaimed non-eventful life. One night she goes to a local pub and meets a handsome stranger, who she flirts with to the point of a kiss. The stranger admits he’s married and they go their separate ways. When she goes to work the next morning, she discovers that the stranger, is her new boss, David. She later runs into his wife Adele. They strike up a conversation and a friendship. Adele forces Louise to keep their friendship a secret from David. As time goes on, Louise and David act on their attraction with one another and enters into an affair. Louise is caught in the middle of the husband and wife’s sadistic marriage.
I was excited to read this book. However, it became exhausting after awhile. It was very lengthy, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The story just felt like it dragged through a huge portion of the book. It took beyond the halfway mark for the mystery to unfold. The ending was a twister that I didn’t see coming; which I did enjoy. I only wished that I wasn’t dragged along for this long ride to get to the mystery of it all.
My Rating 7/10
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (A Book Review)
Identical twin sisters Stella and Desiree Vignes were products of a small black community in Louisiana. The community had clear expectations based on class, as well as a more definitive way of being that was rooted in colorism. After running away at the age of sixteen, the twin sisters’ lives take on different forms. Stella decides to leave all she knows to live out her life as a white woman. Desiree, lost after being abandoned by her twin, decides to move on and purposely goes in the opposite direction of her sister. Years later, their paths cross again by way of their daughters’ lives. Will they pick up where they left off or will the wounds of abandonment and betrayal be too much to heal?
This was such a rich and interesting story. The layers of lies that Stella had to weave to ensure a solid chance of a self proclaimed better life was hard to watch. It seeped into her daughter Kennedy’s life in the strangest of ways. Desiree restarting her life in a fit of rebellion caused by resentment and betrayal, affected both her and her daughter Jude deeply. Even though the chasm between Stella and Desiree was profound, the connection that resurfaced was undeniable and ran extremely deep. A beautifully written tale of loss and love with many lessons sprinkled in between. I really enjoyed reading this.
Rating: 9/10
The Power of A Good Story
The year 2020 is nearing a close. It has been a very interesting and intense year. With the ever present inundation of constant bad news, I’d sucumbed to a dull numbing of sorts. To break out of this crazy mess I found myself in, I intentionally sought out books that forced me to feel and be present. It felt very freeing to be so invested in these characters and what they had going on. The gift of these authors’ voices snapped me out of the abyss of 2020. The power of a good story is a beautiful and meaningful thing. I’m most grateful for that.
FOREVER BOOK FEVER 