Just a girl and her books
FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER | Angeline Boulley03.16.2021 | Henry, Holt & Co.Rating: 5/5 stars As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, … Continue reading Book Review: Firekeeper’s Daughter
BETTY | Tiffany McDaniel 08.18.2020 | Knopf Rating: 4.5/5 stars Betty Carpenter was born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and a white mother. Betty is the sixth of eight children. The world the Carpenter family inhabits is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and from within. … Continue reading Book Review: Betty
THE PROPHETS | Robert Jones, Jr. 01.05.2021 | G.P. Putnam’s Sons Rating: 4/5 stars Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s. That was the way it was since the beginning and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended animals, but they also found refuge from the world around … Continue reading Book Review: The Prophets
THE DIVINES | Ellie Eaton 01.19.2021 | William Morrow Ratingl: 3/5 stars Memor Amici. Remember Friends. Josephine will never forget the motto that belonged to her elite English boarding school, St. John the Divine. She will never stop being a Divine, no matter how hard she tries to put that time behind her. Fluctuating between … Continue reading Book Review: The Divines
WHITE IVY | Susie Yang 11.3.2020 | Simon & Schuster Rating: 4/5 stars Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar, but you would never know that by looking at her. She was raised outside of Boston, where she learned to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops by her grandmother. Thieving is Ivy’s … Continue reading Book Review: White Ivy
SAVING RUBY KING | Catherine Adel West 06.16.2020 | Park Row Rating: 5/5 stars The world always finds a way of coming full circle. When Ruby King’s mother is found murdered in their home on Chicago’s South Side, the police brush the case aside and file it away as another act of violence in a … Continue reading Book Review: Saving Ruby King
BELOVED| Toni Morrison 06.08.04 (First published 09.1987) | Vintage Rating: 5/5 stars Sethe was born a slave. Born into a life where her own mother did not nurse her. Born into a life she knew one day she would need to escape. Eighteen years have passed since the day she decided to run away from … Continue reading Book Review: Beloved
THE VANISHING HALF | Brit Bennett 06.02.2020 | Riverhead Books Rating: 5/5 stars Stella and Desiree Vignes are identical twins who grew up in a small town known as Mallard, a Black community that prides themselves on having a lighter skinned population. These two women will always look the same, but the paths that their … Continue reading Book Review: The Vanishing Half
ASH MOUNTAIN | Helen Fitzgerald05.14.2020 | Orenda BooksRating: 4/5 stars Fran thought she escaped her hometown of Ash Mountain years ago. After her father finds himself ill, she is forced to return to the place she hates and care for him. Fran’s relationship is over and she hates her dead end job in the city, … Continue reading Blog Tour: Ash Mountain
MY DARK VANESSA | Kate Elizabeth Russell 03.10.2020 | William Morrow Rating: 5/5 stars 2000: Fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye has been accepted to an elite boarding school. While trying to find her place in this new school, Vanessa becomes entranced by her forty-two-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane. They begin to have an affair. 2017: Allegations around … Continue reading Book Review: My Dark Vanessa
What Jess Reads 