Just a girl and her books
THE TWO LIVES OF SARA | Catherine Adel West 09.06.2022 | Park Row Rating: 5/5 stars Sara King has nothing, save for her secrets and the baby in her belly, as she boards the bus to Memphis, hoping to outrun her past in Chicago. She is welcomed with open arms by Mama Sugar, a kindly … Continue reading Book Review: The Two Lives of Sara
THE BURNING SEASON | Alison Wisdom 07.05.22 | Harper Perennial Rating: 4/5 stars Rosemary has often felt like trouble, and now at thirty-two, her marriage to her college sweetheart, Paul, is crumbling. In a last-ditch attempt to restore it, she agrees to give herself over to a newly formed Christian sect in central Texas, run … Continue reading Book Review: The Burning Season
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
What Jess Reads 