Summary: Boom Town by Nic Stone centers on a strip club employee who searches for her former work bestie after the replacement hiree also goes missing. Now that two women have disappeared without a trace, she finds all trails lead to one mysterious man.
Synopsis: Micah, who goes by Lyriq, works at Boom Town, an established strip club in Atlanta. She gained notoriety performing with Felice, known as Lucky. Lyriq distances herself after a devastating breast cancer diagnosis. She has undergone surgeries to remove her breasts and is deciding on reconstruction surgery. The burden is too heavy to share with Lucky.
But Lucky takes the distance as abandonment. She finds solace with a customer named Thomas McIntyre. Thomas is not the average patron; he is a White man and a secretive music executive. He tells Lucky he wants a baby while his wife does not. Lucky gravitates toward Thomas’ promise of helping her find meaningful work outside Boom Town.
Lyriq is usually resting whenever she gets a chance at the club. She can no longer dance, but she helps keep the club running smoothly. One night, she finds Lucky after an assault. She knows Lucky needs her, but when she tries to understand the turn of events, Lucky is gone.
When Lucky stops showing up to work, Lyriq assigns Lucky’s locker to Damaris, who becomes Charm. She vouches for Charm as a favor, but the teen is having trouble applying her dance skills to Boom Town’s expectations. Then, Charm disappears. But so do thousands of dollars from the club. Lyriq is now forced to find Charm (and the money) and start the search for Lucky.
Theme: Power, privilege, and control
Like in most (if not all) stories surrounding a strip club, the power dynamics are clear-cut. The dancers are at the bottom of the hierarchy. The clients who are enjoying their bodies hold the power. In this story, the women are navigating their lives around the obstacles to hold onto their power.
Lucky and Charm don’t matter to Bones, the club’s manager. He is furious about Charm stealing money from the club. But he sees their disappearances as annoyances; he has to hire more dancers. And on top of that, he is losing money over Lucky and Lyriq’s act coming to an abrupt halt. It is due to Lyriq’s health condition, which triggers a domino effect as Lucky becomes dangerously close to Thomas and subsequently disappears.
The club holds some power over them. Lyriq stays at the job to pay for her health care. Lucky has a master’s degree in education, yet makes more money as a dancer than on a teacher’s salary. Then, she gets trapped in Thomas’s web of deceit to the point Lyriq belatedly questions the bond.
The surroundings these women had lived in before the strip club felt overpowering as well. Before she became Lucky, Felice separated herself from her family. Before she became Charm, Damaris was involved with a youth pastor at her church. She was underage while believing she was in a mature relationship. To find their power, they found themselves at Boom Town, where their power was under threat again. Micah, Felice, and Damaris are fighting to gain control over their situations.
Theme: Missing Black women and chosen family
A body is found in the first chapter of the novel. Lady Josephine, an unhoused woman, discovers the body in the woods, where she has created a home. She represents a segment of the population of missing Black women.
The main theme of the novel is the plight of missing Black women and how they can quietly disappear from a community. Boom Town is a place of business, but when two employees stop coming to work without an explanation, nothing happens. Nobody reports them missing. People who are looking for them feel like they could get more done than the police. And some people do not connect their absence to a disappearance.
It’s a strip club, while most corporate workplaces will at least contact authorities if an employee fails to show up. Boom Town is a place where many workers have severed ties with friends and families outside of it. This is why Lyriq knows she must look for Lucky and Charm.
As for Charm, she has Dejuan, a friend she was living with, who comes to the club looking for her and raises the alarm on her disappearance. This heightens Lyriq’s concern and forces her to activate the hunt for Lucky, too.
Theme: Motherhood
Being a mother takes on many definitions in this story. Lyriq serves as a motherly figure to Lucky and Charm. She knows she is the one looking out for these girls in a dangerous environment, inside and outside Boom Town.
According to Thomas, his wife, LaBrettney aka Brett, does not want a baby. He is obsessed with having a child. Lucky finds herself becoming empathetic. But her empathy leads to danger. More threads tied to motherhood and reproductive choices affect Felice, Damaris, and Brett.
Conclusion: The author’s adult debut novel has heart and grit, but it is a rocky read with multiple first-person points of view shifting back and forth from the present and the past. The writing is stream-of-consciousness, so the characters’ voices lift off the page. For some readers, this may distract them from engaging with the story. There is a lot of exposition, where the author explains backstory upon backstory and bookends chapters with the present. The story is unique and thrilling for a commercial fiction novel, but the changes in voice and writing style weigh it down, potentially heightening or diminishing engagement.
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell is a literary fiction novel that introduces us to a womanizing jazz musician and the females who cross his path, including his daughter.
It’s 2013, and Circus Palmer is a 40-year-old trumpet player who takes gigs across the country but doesn’t like to plant roots anywhere. In the first few pages, he learns that Maggie, the woman who enthralls him, is pregnant. He tries to convince her to end the pregnancy; he can’t be rooted down to anything. And she shouldn’t root herself down since she’s a drummer. A child can’t fit into their musician-touring life. Maggie says she wants the baby, and she returns to drumming while Circus heads home to Boston. We meet his 14-year-old daughter Koko, who’s trying to navigate high school and control her fluctuating hormones. With Circus back in the picture, Koko still harbors the emptiness she felt for years living without him and living with her regretful, depressed mother, Circus’ ex-wife Pia.
While Koko and Pia are constants in Circus’ life, the jazzman finds himself constantly attracted to other women. He falls for a twenty-something waitress at a bar where he plays for gigs, for a mysterious woman on the train, for a woman who will do anything for him when he visits her in nearby Providence, Rhode Island. He comes across a woman he wanted to marry years ago while he witnesses the decline of the woman he did marry by the weight of taking care of their daughter and desiring love from him. All these women still don’t make up for losing Maggie and the child she may be carrying. As he wonders about that child, he realizes the need to focus on Koko as his daughter falls for boys who remind him of himself. Though his dream of recording an album still lingers in the background, his womanizing cripples his ability to assume the fame he swears he can taste.
Unpeeling the layers of the womanizer and the women hurt by the actions make for an absorbing story. It switches between perspectives with the trail of women Circus leaves in his wake. Even meeting the women who spend one night with him show how his carelessness can feel magnitudinous to the women he hurts. Koko detects the pain he is causing other women because her mother lives with the pain on a deeper level. So, the added thread of a teenage daughter hungry for love seeing her father also hungry for love gives the story more depth. And Circus, of course, doesn’t put two and two together about how his actions affect Koko or his career. He thinks his womanizing helps him stay away as a father in case he messes up parenthood and helps him stay creative with his music when a muse disappears. Yet, the dependence on women derails his future, as he lives in a pattern of unfulfilled opportunities.
Overall, the book introduces characters who are intriguing as they sift through their emotions after welcoming Circus or re-welcoming him into their lives. Watching the characters come into their feelings on the pages make the story memorable as if you know the characters. The smoothness of the details about their everyday lives also hops off the page.
⚠️Spoilers ahead! Read the book and/or watch the film on Netflix.
⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below have graphic references to topics such as sexual abuse, self-harm, violence, and eating disorders.
Jessica Knoll’s chilling debut novel rocked the best-sellers lists in 2015. Another women’s fiction book about a magazine editor who wants to take on New York City in designer duds, but this version has a twist. Well, several twists that give the borderline unlikeable character a reason for her behavior.
At the time, many readers hated Ani FaNelli, the main character of Luckiest Girl Alive heart-wrenchingly played by Mila Kunis as an adult and Chiara Aurelia as a teenager. Every thought of imperfection runs through Ani’s mind. She is thin because she heads to the gym to ensure every morsel of food is negligible from her dieting and occasional binge eating. She likes BDSM sex; the torture turns her on. She is obsessed with Gucci belts, Rolex watches, and the generational wealth of an engagement ring from her blue-blooded fiancé with a lofty Manhattan business career. She has everything, yet she’s unhappy about everything.
In the film, her thoughts are narrated aloud by Mila. The first three minutes of the film show her holding two knives to consider if they’re worthy to be on her wedding registry. Then we see the blood dripping from the blades. She shakes her head to get rid of the image. Throughout the entire film, it’s difficult to stray your eyes away from the screen because there are numerous visions and flashbacks of the multi-tiered incident that forever wrinkles the threads of Ani’s seemingly perfect life.
Ani is redeemed by the visual representation of her as an adult and as a teenager. Ani used to be TifAni FaNelli, a girl who needed tuition to attend the private Brentley School in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. She makes friends with the outcasts and the popular kids, similar to the comedic classic Mean Girls, but in Luckiest Girl Alive, the friendships feel darker.
One night after a dance, Ani leaves with her popular friends to a house party. She drinks, like all the other kids are drinking. But she blacks out. When she comes to, she can’t move, but a boy is raping her. Then she passes out again. Another boy desecrates her body. She soon finds the strength to get up, but a third boy rapes her anyway. She fights him off to run out of the house and to a gas station where her English teacher takes her to his house so she can avoid her mother.
These events happen in the book. When the book came out, people wondered how the author could come up with such a horrible story that unfortunately happens more in this society than we would like to acknowledge. It took author Jessica Knoll a year to share her story of being raped by three boys at a party as a high school student, as a minor, as a girl.
Nonprofit organizations RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and Sandy Hook Promise reviewed the scripts for the sexual assault and gun violence content, and an intimacy coordinator was on set to support the cast and crew, the author told Vanity Fair.
What comes after the rapes in the story is even more violent. Ani’s outcast friends also had their own stories of humiliation executed by the same boys who had raped Ani. They get upset with Ani for not standing up, until they realize they hadn’t stood up for themselves. Without Ani’s knowledge, they bomb the cafeteria at lunchtime and start shooting select kids. This takes place in 1999, the same year the country was horrified to see the mass school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Ani fends for herself going through the school looking for her popular friends who are being targeted. Her friend armed with a rifle hands her the weapon to shoot the boy who had raped her when she was conscious. Dean, played by Carson MacCormac as a teen and Alex Barone as an adult, is crying for his life. Ani can’t do it. Arthur, played by Thomas Barbusca, kept pushing her to fight back, stop protecting her rapists. He shoots Dean at the waist. Ani stabs Arthur to death. She wanted to stop the control of being told what she should do about her trauma and stop the bloodshed triggered by her trauma.
When the public memorials begin, Ani is turned away with her mother, played by Connie Britton, because she was accused of having relationships with Dean and two of the boys who were killed. That’s when her mother first hears Ani had been raped. Her mother berates her for drinking at the party, laying the blame on Ani for the rapes, but says she will attain a lawyer.
Ani’s relationship with her mother is still strained as they prepare for her luxurious wedding 16 years later. Her mother doesn’t want to relive the situation. She hates that Ani blames her for making Ani stay at the Brentley School after the multiple incidents in order to get into the best college. She hates that Ani blames her for the slut-shaming; it’s not her fault Ani developed faster than other girls. What was she supposed to do with a curvy daughter accused of being involved in a school shooting because the daughter had been raped while drinking at an off-campus party? She wants Ani to ignore the past and focus on the present.
The emotions of the school shooting are rawer than ever as an independent documentarian, played by Dalmar Abuzeid, keeps reaching out to Ani to convince her to discuss the nation’s “largest private school shooting in history.” As the documentarian tries to get Ani on board, Ani watches Dean’s interviews on the TODAY show and other shows as he paints himself purely as the wheelchair-bound victim and continues the allegation that Ani knew the school shooting was going to happen. Getting famous off his memoir, Dean signs onto the documentary. So does Ani, as long as she doesn’t see Dean.
Jessica Knoll / Image: Sabrina Lantos
When she sits down for the interview taped at the staircase of the Brentley School, Ani tells her side of the story. She says she didn’t know her friends had plans to kill classmates over what happened to her and what happened to them. Her rapes became inconsequential to the coverage the public was fed about the shooting. During her interview, Dean starts wheeling himself toward her. She leaves, feeling unprotected again. The documentarian chases her outside and says her story will help other women. She says the women seem to be fine without hearing her story.
Back in Manhattan, Ani is a senior editor at a women’s magazine similar to Cosmo, but she has received an offer from The New York Times. She decides maybe her story could be told in her own way, so she writes a draft essay. Once her boss, played by Flashdance legend Jennifer Beals, skims the essay, she tells her own story of being raped by a high school boyfriend. The essay is not intense enough, she argues. Ani is too afraid to reveal her rapists and describe the nitty-gritty, including her true emotions. That will help women. Not surface-level bullshit.
Ani goes back to the drawing board by dropping in on one of Dean’s book tour stops in the city. Afterward, Ani approaches him about pushing the lie that she was involved in the shooting. Dean says he’ll stop pushing that lie if she keeps quiet about the rape. The power dynamics are in full range, where a man is believed over a woman, a boy is believed over a girl, especially a girl depicted as a slut after being sexually assaulted. Ani pushes that Dean should admit he had raped her when they were 16. He finally admits it, reluctantly, as if he’s tired of hearing that allegation. Satisfied, Ani walks away and makes sure her iPhone recorded their conversation.
Meanwhile, Ani arrives at her rehearsal dinner on Nantucket. She gets word that her new and improved essay will run in The New York Times. Her best friend from college, played by Justine Lupe, is thrilled for her. Ani’s fiancé Luke, played by Finn Wittrock, does not have the same reaction. Like Ani’s mother, he’s tired of hearing about the 16-year-old traumas, especially at their wedding weekend. Why can’t they be happy on the happiest of days? Why does Ani have to keep bringing up her traumas that always need unpacking? Ani admits that Luke was a box to check off on her list of a perfect life. She was a “wind-up doll” that said whatever she needed to say around him. After realizing that she needs to keep healing with a partner supportive of that healing, she calls off the wedding.
Back in the city, Ani is getting emails from women touched by her essay. They had been sexually assaulted, too. They were familiar with their assaulter or assaulters, too. They didn’t report the assault or assaults, too. They weren’t believed, too. Then another female reporter accosts Ani on Fifth Avenue and complains she didn’t have to ruin Dean’s reputation. After all, Dean has done so much for the community. Ani tells her to fuck off.
The film follows the novel, which is published by Simon & Schuster, almost to a T. In the end credits designed like the original paperback with bright yellow font against a wilting black rose that turns into a blooming red rose, the author is listed as the screenwriter and executive producer. For the author to have such a strong presence over the film, it brings a unique energy to the project.
Jessica Knoll fought to remain the screenwriter for the film, unlike many other authors who do not have the experience of writing screenplays. She may not have had the experience, but she knew she had to have ownership of how the story will play onscreen. The dedication is apparent as one of the better book-to-TV projects available on streaming now. She makes an early cameo in the elevator with Mila’s Ani on the way to work.
The cinematography, as in every scene is flawless, tells the story in different time periods, in different places exquisitely. We see the little things that annoy Ani, that would annoy many perfectionists, like a loose thread hanging from a steering wheel. We also see the simulated rapes and shootings that are very hard to watch, especially knowing it’s fiction based on true events.
Because of the graphic images, reviewers from top news outlets have said the film is unstructured. The film packs a lot with a heavy punch. The film is not fodder for true crime, another complaint in some of these reviews. It’s about a traumatized woman whose flashbacks are getting worse as a classmate’s memoir is selling and a documentary is forthcoming based on her traumas and void of her voice. She is not healed in the end despite the high readership of an essay about the traumas. It’s not a story representing every woman in the #MeToo movement. It’s one story that has many parallels to the author’s real-life story.
Watching the film is more intense than reading the book. Like we said above, the book had readers hate Ani, but watching two actresses play Ani in the throes of her traumatic experiences we first learn about in the book gives a more fine-tuned visual. If you were not affected by the story through the book, you will be affected by the story through the film. It’s a complex portrayal of a triggering story that came from the author’s own experiences. It was never an easy story to digest, but it was a story people were willing to read.
The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman leans on the grittiness to tell the story of a Black girl living in the Chicago projects searching for why her unarmed sister was killed outside the home of a police officer.
Sixteen-year-old Beau Willet is trying to overcome the disbelief of attending her older sister Katia’s funeral. She wears a memorial sweatshirt in honor of her 22-year-old sister, who was killed by a single gunshot wound to the face fired by an off-duty police officer outside of his home in the middle of the night. Katia was accused of planning to rob the home, but Beau doesn’t accept that narrative. She depends on her friend Deja to help her figure out what happened to Katia, who was with her boyfriend Jordan at the time of the killing. Except Jordan has been missing since Katia’s death, and he is the only person who could clear Katia’s name.
I should be crying, too, but I can’t for some reason. It’s like my ducts are all blocked up and the tears are dripping down my insides instead of my cheeks. Katia, why didn’t you just stay home with me instead?
Beau knows the police department and the city will not investigate her sister’s killing fairly because she’s Black, her sister was Black, and they’re from the impoverished Grady Park neighborhood where Black people get killed all the time. Katia’s death is in the news cycle for what feels like a second until the rest of the city moves on and feels sympathy for the police officer and his family instead of Beau and her family. To get the answers she needs, Beau is determined to find Jordan. She feels alone in her quest when it comes to her family, her parents too depressed to push for more answers while trying to keep the roof over their heads. Deja seems occupied in a new relationship to help Beau solve the crime, and Beau feels guilty pulling Deja into her web of grief. While she’s looking for Jordan, Beau finds herself falling for Champion, a boy she goes to school with though he lives in a McMansion in the affluent Purple Hills neighborhood.
Everything’s all screwed up between me and Champion because I’m the girl with the murdered sister. Neither of us says it, but if he asked me to be his girl now, everyone would think it’s because he feels sorry for me.
As Beau and Champion become more than friends, Beau finds herself and her friends engaging in petty fights with girls and guys in Grady Park who may or may not know what really happened to Katia. Nobody is snitching. Then Beau gets an anonymous tip that Jordan is in her apartment building complex. At first, she doesn’t believe that rumor because she knows everyone in the complex and hasn’t seen anything amiss; she swears she would’ve noticed Jordan by now, better yet someone would’ve been loyal to her and told her about his whereabouts.
While Deja seems to fade into her relationship, Beau taps Sonnet, another friend who uses her Pretty Little Liars knowledge to play detective. Sonnet lives a life more similar to Champion’s, so Beau feels immense pressure to protect Sonnet and herself. The guilt of Beau’s grief ebbs and flows as she leans on the friends not used to the atmosphere of the projects she lives in. The deeper they get into their investigation, the higher the stakes are. Blindly, Beau follows every clue until she finds herself in trouble to the point she may meet the same fate Katia did.
Being inside Beau’s mind from the first-person perspective is incredible as she pushes aside the grief and depression of losing her sister while looking for answers for why her sister died at the hands of a gun fired by an off-duty police officer. Why was Katia outside this officer’s home at 4 a.m. with Jordan? Why did Jordan disappear? The questions resound throughout the pages as Beau tries to unwrap the mystery in her crime-ridden neighborhood where asking such questions about why someone was killed could get you killed. When Beau is in the bedroom she shared with Katia, the gloom overwhelms her as she looks through her sister’s belongings for any clues, but she only finds what could’ve been Katia’s destiny. The plans for the future seem to be the only clues Katia left behind, and it strengthens Beau more in doing the work the police won’t do.
Overall, this young adult novel stands out with the reality of being a Black kid in the inner city and feeling like you, anyone who looks like you, and anyone you love doesn’t matter. Beau knows her sister’s killing will never get a fair investigation because Katia was accused of burglarizing a police officer’s home. But she knows her sister wouldn’t commit such an act, so she’s the only one who could stand up for Katia. Beau and her friends are the Black girls left standing who have to stand up for the Black girls who don’t make it out of places like Grady Park. In the audiobook version, narrator Ariel Blake does a fantastic job of conveying the sadness and determination in Beau’s voice. Out of similar works such as Angie Thomas’ books set in the similar fictional neighborhood of Garden Heights in The Hate U Give, On the Come Up, and Concrete Rose, Juliana Goodman’s debut novel makes a splash in the subgenre of social justice YA with digging into the mental health aspect of showing the tumultuous journey of the teenage main character struggling with how society paints girls like her, including her dead sister, and trying to prove that they deserve to be seen like any other girls.
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams follows two best-selling authors who reunite on the New York literati circuit years after a high school fling that left them scarred. It’s a sophisticated romance still accompanied by a happily ever after.
Manhattanite single mom Eva Mercy is a former best-selling novelist whose Black vampire romance series à la Twilight still excites fans via the interwebs. By chance, an author drops out of a panel event, and Eva gets the last-minute invitation to fill the spot. That’s where she sees fellow, still-successful best-selling novelist Shane Hall, a mysterious intellectual who makes women and men alike swoon. Eva tries not to swoon because it turns out she and Shane went to high school once in D.C. and spent a week of debauchery in a mansion during their senior year. They meet up for a day in New York where the deep-rooted chemistry overtakes them. The day blends into another one and another where they start catching up about what went wrong when they were teenagers. Eva thinks Shane, who was a foster child and drug dealer at the time, abandoned her at her lowest point, but she learns that another force divided them. As they try to rekindle what they had as adults, Eva and Shane must combat their demons to accept the love that was severed so many years ago.
This is Tia Williams’ most complex work yet. Known for centering her novels on Black women in New York working in media, the author adds more layers to Eva’s character and Shane’s character not common in a lot of women’s fiction and romance novels. In adolescence, the main characters are dealing with substance abuse, self-harm, unstable homes, and missing parents. In adulthood, the age-old traumas return with them realizing how reflective their behaviors are when they interact with each other and the kids in their lives like Eva’s Gen Z daughter Audre and Shane’s mentee Ty. The character and storyline complexity blends well with the ubiquitous pop culture references the author loves to add to her novels.
Also, this is the first novel the author makes her main character an author as well when her previous novels’ main characters are beauty and fashion editors like her former day job life. Switching up the career choice also shows more depth with Eva translating her healing process through her books and Shane doing the same with his. Another element of the novel is Eva living with her invisible disability of suffering from debilitating migraines that worsen with barometric pressure. This also reflects the author’s life. She has given this trait to her first novel’s main character from The Accidental Diva, but this time around in Seven Days in June she makes Eva feel the everyday pain and impact and gives Audre the fear of seeing her mother chronically ill. The migraines also contribute to Eva’s writer’s block and how she’s struggling to deliver the 15th book of her famous series that is getting the film treatment with some hiccups along the way.
Overall, this novel is an excellent summer beach read that’s definitely a page-turner the deeper you get into the book. Tia Williams’ last novel from 2016, The Perfect Find, is in production with Gabrielle Union for Netflix. This novel also has silver-screen potential, especially with the book-to-film subplot that brings up diversity and inclusion in Hollywood projects.
Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins explores the relationships between women in two families intertwined by a broken promise that haunts a community over the alleged power of the caul.
Set in Harlem, the novel introduces us first to Laila, a Black woman who seems to have it all in her perfect brownstone where she lives with her perfect husband. But she can’t carry a baby to term, her miscarriages becoming the talk of the town. Then one day, she’s pregnant again but constantly worries about losing the baby. A man at her church named Landon approaches her about the opportunity to make sure her baby will be born alive and full term. Landon, who happens to be Laila’s niece Amara’s godfather, seems to be someone who can be trusted. He offers Laila a piece of caul, a rare layer of skin purported to have protecting powers. Laila ponders about buying the caul for her unborn child when she meets Josephine, a clerk at the convenience store. She sees Josephine get a paper cut and instantly heal with the caul she tries to hide. This magnetizes Laila to Josephine Melancon, who also says she’s had a history of miscarriages. Once Laila decides to buy the caul, Landon says the deal is off. This drives Laila to insanity as she loses her baby.
Laila ends up losing her husband and her home and lives with her sister Denise. Denise’s daughter, Columbia University student Amara, sees her aunt Laila unable to recover from the breakdown. The attention on Laila saves Amara, who is keeping her own pregnancy a secret. When she meets her godfather Landon at the church, Amara falls but rebounds. Landon notices this power and the pregnancy and offers Amara a place to hide out. Amara stays with Landon and his family until she gives birth to a girl named Hallow. Born with a caul, Hallow is raised by Landon and his mistress Josephine and is groomed to continue the profitable Melancon family business of selling caul to wealthy White people and denying caul to the Black people in their community.
Years later, Amara is preparing for a run as district attorney, but what the Melancons did to her family still gnaws at her. Laila’s tragedy becomes her driving force to be a successful lawyer, and she feels she finally found the legal solution with shutting down the Melancons’ caul-selling empire. In the back of her mind, she’s also thinking of the daughter she gave up and wondering what happened to her.
The novel is centered on the folklore of caul and how it would be sold through centuries to people who sought protection from danger. It also blends in family, fertility, race, class, and gentrification, spanning over 20 years in an evolving Harlem. Female-centered families anchor the story with most of the focus on the Melancons with matriarch Maman, oldest daughter Josephine, and youngest daughter Iris, who also lost her mind from having to be cut for her caul to protect anyone who pays for it. Iris’ daughter Helena had an accident as a child making her unfit to donate caul, which makes her an unruly companion to Hallow, who’s considered the perfect caulbearer. Josephine also feels stuck in the business but sees her affair with Landon as a way out. As the Black residents of Harlem see a mysterious family in the brownstone, the Melancons inside are in constant conflict about the business they refuse to share with the community because the community cannot afford the caul services. If one has the remedy, then why not share it with your community? That’s the question that plagues the outside where residents like Laila and Amara have a vendetta against the Melancons.
Overall, the first novel from journalist and nonfiction author Morgan Jerkins is a smooth literary fiction read that takes an element of magical realism and mixes it with the changing times around race and gentrification.
Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson rips a page from the Mute R. Kelly movement to create a traumatic storyline that brings a teenage girl in the crosshairs of the dangerously famous life of an R&B crooner with a penchant for attracting underaged girls.
Enchanted Jones sees herself as a mermaid. She swims on her high school team and fosters a golden voice. One day her best friend Gabriella tells Enchanted about a showcase where she can win an opportunity for the singing career of her dreams. Enchanted tricks her mother into driving them to the showcase where she sings her heart out onstage but doesn’t get a coveted spot on a singing competition show. But 28-year-old R&B sensation Korey Fields does notice Enchanted and hands her his phone number when her mother isn’t looking.
That transpires into a flirty text message exchange with Korey dropping promises to catapult Enchanted’s career. Her parents agree for Enchanted to spend time with Korey in his home studio. Those experiences bring Enchanted and Korey closer while her parents are wondering why they can’t come into the session or why she’s staying hours longer. Once their relationship goes public thanks to a viral video Korey released without Enchanted’s knowledge, Enchanted joins Korey on tour. Her parents aren’t sure, but Korey’s female assistant Jessica agrees to be a guardian for Enchanted. Jessica is a woman, so the parents trust her to watch over Enchanted. But of course that’s not what happens.
Enchanted is transformed into the adult singer Korey wants her to be but so is another girl from the showcase that Enchanted finds in Korey’s mansion. They both are locked into their respective rooms. Jessica tells Enchanted she can’t leave the room for any reason—even going to the bathroom in which she’s given a bucket. The fairy tale romance Enchanted thought she had quickly is going south with Korey controlling her every move. She eventually breaks away but not before she’s a suspect in his murder.
The story mirrors what we know of R. Kelly’s alleged sexual predatoriness on teenage girls. Enchanted is promised the singing career of her dreams by the famous Korey Fields as he lures her into a manipulative relationship.
One factor here is that other characters around Enchanted are embarrassed by her faux pas of spending time with Korey such as her Will & Willow friends. The Black social group mimicking the real Jack & Jill have text exchanges throughout the book judging Enchanted and her parents for what’s taking place in the limelight. They say their parents are judging Enchanted’s parents for signing off on the tour and losing contact with their daughter. Enchanted’s younger sister Shea is totally embarrassed at Will & Willow and at their predominantly White school about what Enchanted has done. Gabriella demands Enchanted leave Korey alone, which puts stress on their friendship until Gabriella disappears from Enchanted’s life. And when Enchanted tries to find Gabriella after leaving Korey, nobody believes Gabriella even exists.
The trust Enchanted and her family have for Korey in the beginning also stems from the celebrity status. Korey is a known figure, so why would he hurt Enchanted? Like the real R. Kelly, the fictional R&B singer had allegations against him in the media brought by women who had inappropriate relationships with him when underaged, but his success overpowered that news. People confuse celebrity for trust because these individuals are famous and they wouldn’t break the law with so many eyes on their every move, but the last several years have taught us that a lot of men kept secrets pre-#MeToo movement and when their secrets rose to the public surface, they were quashed.
The edge of eighteen is another issue explored in this book with Enchanted getting too excited to enter adulthood and make her dreams happen instantly. Usually adults learn quickly that dreams don’t happen in a snap, but teens desire that freedom on the highest level. And many girls find themselves in the grasp of men who promise them that freedom, and in this case, that dream if they engage in a sexual relationship with those men. They believe it’s their only hope while they also get their hearts involved, which is what Enchanted does when she feels like she has to protect Korey’s feelings especially when he’s dramatically displaying them and blaming the outbursts on his past.
Overall, this book has triggering elements but heightens the sexual, physical, and emotional abuse a girl can go through while in a relationship with a grown man.
Paper Gods by Goldie Taylor is a political thriller centered in Atlanta where characters pretend to be sweet as syrup to the public and wicked in private.
Equipped with degrees from Spelman College and Harvard Law, Atlanta mayor Victoria Dobbs is a force to be reckoned with. Her shiny life with her cardiac surgeon husband Marshall Overstreet and their twin daughters, Maya and Mahalia, after poet Angelou and gospel singer Jackson, is enviable. When her mentor Congressman Ezra Hawkins is shot dead by a sniper in the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Victoria finds a red origami dragon beside Hawkins’ body. She takes it and tries to decipher the meaning since she’s seen one before. But Hawkins’ position is up for grabs, and Victoria wants it. As she announces her run in the special election, uber-wealthy White men Virgil Loudermilk and his cousin-brother Whit Delacourte look for their own candidate to snatch Victoria’s power. It turns out mostly Loudermilk’s actions have sinister origins, connected to a committee of White politicos arranging for Democratic Black politicos to hold city positions like mayor but not state positions like governor, reserved for mostly White Republicans. The forced racial divide in politics has piqued the interest of veteran reporter Hampton Bridges as he’s been pursuing the story for years. His snooping has placed him on the blacklist for Victoria, Loudermilk, and Delacourte. He’s also been a victim of a suspicious car crash with his latest college-age girl in the front seat that raises more concern. While everyone is trying to hide their secrets and dodge threats, they are making sure they protect their best interests no matter who gets killed in the process.
This novel explores the dual identity most politicos presumably live with. Mayor Dobbs, for example, is the impeccable Black woman worthy of likeability, but she’s also pulling strings behind the scenes to make sure she stays on top. Loudermilk and Delacourte remain top lawyers at major companies throughout the Atlanta region while pulling the strings in overall state politics. Everyone’s hands in this story are dirty and get filthier by the page. The amount of scandal that multiplies for each character makes it a page-turner, especially as characters get killed or almost killed. What incites character empathy is how the characters try to protect their families, with many members having the Southern-style double first name.
Overall, the novel is an entertaining take on the fictional political atmosphere that reads like a smooth investigative magazine piece. The author is the editor-at-large at The Daily Beast, so she uses many of the characters’ last names as their main names, meaning it’s written with journalistic flair. Read this book before the John Legend-produced ABC series starring Nia Long comes out. Also, the audiobook is hard to follow with the plethora of detail, especially all the names, and popular reader Bahni Turpin’s voice doesn’t vibe with the material.
*Given an advanced reading copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
The White Coat Diaries by Madi Sinha is a fun mishmash novel that has a healthy dose of romance drama, family drama, and career drama.
Dr. Norah Kapadia is the daughter of a renowned cardiologist who died when she was a child in a car accident. So she wants to live up to his name, but it’s been difficult with her mother still mourning years later struggling with depression and diabetes. Norah’s brother and sister-in-law lay the guilt on her for not helping with her mother. Once she starts her residency, Norah quickly finds herself falling for her supervisor, Ethan. They start going out. Norah is falling hard, and she thinks Ethan is too until she discovers he may or may not be sleeping with another doctor. But when a patient on Norah’s watch dies unexpectedly due to Ethan’s advice, Ethan asks Norah to lie for him. Her feelings for him cloud her judgment. As she constructs the lie, she tries to figure out if Ethan is worth the possible obliteration of her medical career. But more mistakes along the way end up with her making sacrifices she didn’t expect.
The pressure to meet your career goals while being bogged down by family needs feels authentic, especially with Norah’s mother experiencing health issues and Norah being a doctor who helps when she can but can’t be on call 24/7 just for her mother. She has other patients! And she learns the importance of patient ethics as the book shows the stress of residency life and how patients’ well-being can still slip between the cracks when the doctors are not paying attention. While the doctors are worrying about patients, their own well-being is deteriorating, and they stay together all the time which leads to sexual tension. This story shows how hormones can lead to the wrong decisions as Norah, a virgin due to never having time for a social life, is still figuring out what it means to even be in love.
Overall, the novel is a page-turner since Grey’s Anatomy-like medical romances feel rare in the women’s fiction genre. The author is a doctor herself, so the ups and downs Norah is dealing with as she starts her career strikes a chord in the love, family, and friend departments.
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas follows a teenage girl through her rise in the local rap game as she learns to navigate her emotions around a traumatic event at her high school. Like Angie’s debut novel The Hate U Give, this story features a black teen girl trying to overcome obstacles in the fictional Garden Heights.
The daughter of the late rap legend Lawless, Bri is 16 and hungry to jump-start her rap career. Her Aunt Pooh becomes her unofficial agent by hooking Bri up with a chance at the main rap battle competition in the city. Once she steps up into the ring, Bri feels her nerves until the rapper across from her, Milez, disses her father. She never knew her father, but she knows he deserves the respect of every rapper in Garden Heights. She transfers that anger into her rhymes, emerging as the winner. She soon learns her competitor is the son of Lawless’ manager, Supreme. And Supreme sees the opportunity to make Bri a star. While riding the wave of future stardom, Bri is slammed against the floor at her school by two white security guards. As one of a few students of color at the historically white performing arts school, Bri knows she walks in those hallways with her skin color being seen as a threat. She takes that frustration and puts it into a song. Aunt Pooh warns Bri not to release that faux gangster front song, but when Aunt Pooh disappears, Bri decides to upload the song online. It goes viral but brings up a lot of negative attention Bri was not ready for.
The story is a great follow-up to The Hate U Give with a magnified focus on hip-hop and the lifestyles the musicians feel they have to assume due to stereotypes. Bri lives in the black underdeveloped neighborhood of Garden Heights with her Aunt Pooh, who’s in the gang Garden Disciples, and her father being murdered in the streets while at the top of his game because he was faking the lifestyle of being a hardened, weapon-strapped gangster. The juxtaposition of knowing who you are and knowing who others think you are follows Bri while other characters like Bri’s mother Jayda and Milez try to rise above the stereotypes. The school incident is unfortunately becoming viral with many kids of color being thrown to the ground by a white teacher or staffer over a disciplinary issue. Again, Angie weaves a racially charged issue into her book like the shootings of unarmed black people in The Hate U Give.
Overall, this is another hypnotic read from the author that dives deep into a realistic story that’s rare to find in today’s young adult literature.
Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine is a brilliant short story collection surrounding indigenous and Latina characters in Colorado. From the first story to the last story, the book follows the lives of several women who are trying to keep family and history a priority.
“Sugar Babies” is the introductory story showing two classmates trying to care for a pretend baby made of sugar that brings up feelings for the girl who’s trying to develop a relationship with a mother who had abandoned her. “Cheeseman Park” has a young woman staying with her mother and meeting another woman in the same apartment complex who appears misunderstood by their neighbors as they bond in the nearby park. “Remedies” emphasizes how hard it is to incorporate blood ties into the family when a mother brings in her daughter’s father’s other child by another woman into the home and deals with a head lice problem that turns her life upside down. “Tomi” features a woman getting out of prison and bonding with her nephew while figuring out her new surroundings as the neighborhood changes. And the neighborhood changes also comes up in “Galapago” when a grandmother, being pushed by her granddaughter to move away, faces a home invasion. The namesake story, “Sabrina & Corina,” examines the dwindling relationship between two cousins and how one finds relative success and the other experiences the ultimate downfall.
The stories amazingly concentrate in the greater Denver area, showing the Latinx and indigenous female experience we don’t really see in fiction, especially from the perspective of an author who was bred within that culture. There is a struggle for the characters to remain in their homeland where generations before them had settled as they handle the gentrification, family, and discrimination. A consistent theme is the woman’s role in her family and how her relationships with her family dictate all her relationships. They are daughters, granddaughters, sisters, cousins, aunts, mothers, grandmothers figuring out their roles in their current situations.
Overall, the stories are well-structured and thought-provoking. I listened to the book on audio where the voices changed as if to give the indigenous and Latina narrators the opportunity, but it was unnecessary; one narrator throughout the book would’ve worked better to make the transitions more seamless.
“This is not low-stakes for Evelyn. Evelyn can speak casually about things of great importance. But right now, in this moment, when she is taking so much time to make such specific points, I’m realizing this is real. This is happening. She really intends to tell me her life story―a story that no doubt includes the gritty truths behind her career and her marriages and her image. That’s an incredibly vulnerable position she’s putting herself in. It’s a lot of power she’s giving me. I don’t know why she’s giving it to me.”
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid follows the life of a fictional Hollywood siren and the trials and tribulations she experiences in the spotlight during each of her seven marriages. It’s a fascinating page-turner, luring the reader through all the secrets Evelyn holds.
Evelyn Hugo, now almost in her 80s, paints her life without the rose-colored glasses, admitting how hungry she was for the fame and how the fame informed the decisions that will follow her for the rest of her life. This is what struggling journalist Monique learns as she’s chosen by Evelyn to tell her life story, not the article she thought she would be writing for her magazine. As Monique tries to figure out why she’s documenting Evelyn’s life inside the actress’ Upper East Side home, she begins interlacing the stories from Evelyn into her own life, taking her thoughts off her impending divorce. Once they reach the end, Monique learns why Evelyn picked her and the revelation sets her in a tailspin of emotion.
Evelyn jumps into every marriage to seek higher fame or to hide behind her true feelings. She peels back each marriage like an onion. It’s one of the best books to read because the author uses the classic story development technique with building up tension where you want to read the next chapter. One example is the titles of the parts about each husband, including “Brilliant, Kindhearted, Tortured Harry Cameron” and “Goddamn Don Adler.” The reader is intrigued by the titles to learn why each husband gets that particular description up-front. Also, the reason Evelyn requests Monique to be her biographer pops up continuously as we learn more about the many moments of her many successes and comebacks in the entertainment industry while donning her signature emerald green.
Overall, the book reads like a True Hollywood Story with going behind the scenes of the tabloid fodder―inserts in between chapters―making the book delicious and heartwarming.
“Golden Child” by Claire Adam follows the family of twin boys in Trinidad as money eventually rips the family apart. The story feels slow at times, but at the end when seeing the story in its entirety, it’s well-told exploring the haves and have nots within the family.
The story opens up to Clyde looking for his teen son, Paul. Clyde is trying to gather support from the neighbors to see where his son has gone. Paul has been told he’s mentally disabled because he lost oxygen during his birth. His twin brother, Peter, is the opposite, considered very bright and reasonable. Their doctor uncle, Uncle Vishnu, who was present at their birth, is the one who diagnoses these differences between Peter and Paul. As a doctor, Uncle Vishnu, invests in Peter’s education. Clyde fights to keep Paul with Peter in school though Paul is slow. Uncle Vishnu is the biological uncle of Joy, Clyde’s wife and mother to Peter and Paul. Joy also has a brother named Romesh, who has good jobs, and Philip, a famous judge. But there’s jealousy of why Uncle Vishnu financially supports Clyde and his family, the only ones who live in a very modest home, especially with Peter having the potential to leave the island for the pursuit of education and success.
With the story opening to a search for a character, the search feels longer than it should be until the story gets into the history of why Paul went missing. There are point-of-view issues with the beginning mostly belonging to Clyde then hopping to Paul to Peter to the brothers’ teacher, Father Kavanaugh. Some sentences may take a second to realize the point-of-view is not pointing to the right character. It’s just interesting how the point-of-view changes and why it changes because at times it felt like it didn’t need to change or the situation should’ve been told by another character.
The emphasis on the difference between the twin brothers is reminiscent of Abraham Verghese’s “Cutting For Stone,” especially with parallels of following a family of Indian descent in Trinidad where Verghese’s book is on a family of Indian descent in Ethiopia. The differences between the brothers are so heightened throughout the book, but the reader may pick up that there may be nothing wrong with Paul; he acts the way he does because he’s been told his whole life that something’s wrong with him. Paul’s actions propel the jealousy bubbling within the extended family that Clyde and Joy never put much attention on.
Overall, this story punctuates one of the main issues that tear families apart: money. And also shows how some are concerned with the money while others don’t see the concern, which could lead to a troubling sequence of events. It’s a good book for readers who enjoy literary fiction taking place in a country and focusing on a culture underrepresented in books.
“The Farm” by Joanne Ramos is a suspenseful novel around surrogates impregnated by embryos belonging to the uber-rich confined to a farm in upstate New York. But the main character feels she’s being deceived by the farm’s staff and comes to the conclusion her presence there may mean something more sinister.
Jane is a young mother who’s living in a dormitory in New York mostly with other Filipina women, including her cousin Ate. They both take care of 6-month-old Amalia to the best of their abilities with their surroundings. But Ate is a well-known baby nurse constantly recommended for her newborn sleeping method. She’s able to connect Jane with a job with a family, but Jane ruins that opportunity with her motherly instincts. So Ate suggests Jane should be a surrogate mother at this resort called Golden Oaks, where she will receive a bonus for delivering a healthy baby for a very rich family. Jane leaves Amalia in Ate’s care as she embarks to the resort for 9 months. At Golden Oaks, ambitious Mae is running the resort as it’s still in its trial run with the investment of an aging Chinese billionaire, so she’s gentle with Jane, which makes Jane question if she’s carrying the billionaire’s baby. But Mae’s forced kindness is part of the system, Jane learns from her newfound friends, Lisa, who’s in her third surrogate pregnancy at Golden Oaks, and Reagan, also a first-timer who comes from money but wants her own independence for her art career. As Jane confides in her new friends, she finds herself getting in trouble and risking her future paycheck. She tries to lay low until she senses something is wrong with Amalia. Then she is desperate to leave the premises and see her daughter.
This novel does an excellent job with mild suspense as in it plays on motherly instincts and how they can be tested and what a mother would do if she gets a read on a situation.
It also shows the plight of many immigrant women who find work in baby nursing, cleaning, and other jobs as servants of rich families. This story focuses on the Filipina community in New York. Jane arrived in the U.S. when she was a teenager only to live with her mother in California who let relationships with men run her life. When Jane later leaves her husband Billy with Amalia in tow, the only person she can rely on is her older cousin, Ate aka Evelyn, who despite experiencing success in the Manhattan baby circuit still lives in a dormitory with other Filipinas struggling to find steady work since she sends her money to her four grown children in the Philippines, including a disabled son.
Class is another issue. While Jane and Ate work for rich families, Reagan comes from a rich family. Yet she doesn’t know what she truly wants with all the opportunities she has received. She seems to be spiteful about her friend, Macy, who’s black and considered at the top of her game in investment banking though she had a rough upbringing. They both went to Duke, but Macy is in another stratosphere compared to Reagan. As Mae runs Golden Oaks, she’s constantly feeling pity for Jane because of her circumstances as a low-income single mother yet knows she has the power to hold things over Jane’s head with the paycheck for the baby.
The book appears long, but the story is engaging with the situations inside the farm and outside the farm along with backstories of the characters, so this piece of literary fiction is well-conceived.
“Marriage Vacation” by the fictional Pauline Turner Brooks is from “Younger” on TV Land, one of my favorite shows surrounding the literary industry, but this book was not what I expected from the Millennial imprint as in it’s not up to par.
Background on the show is it’s about Liza, a 40something woman who’s masquerading as a millennial at a publisher because she had trouble reentering the workforce after raising her daughter and going through a divorce. She works with Kelsey, an actual millennial, on the Millennial imprint that produces books targeted for millennials, but they took a chance on “Marriage Vacation” conveniently by their boss’ ex-wife, Pauline Turner Brooks. And now the novel is a best-seller — on the show.The book is about a woman similar to Pauline who abandoned her Upper East Side life along with her two daughters and publisher husband to save her sanity and found herself in the jungles of Thailand at a retreat. She spends her days helping a local doctor from Australia with her Doctors Without Borders clinic. She becomes besties with the doctor and the doctor’s younger brother as well as bonds with a refugee mother with two girls who’s looking for her husband in the city. So Pauline goes into the city to find the woman’s husband with the doctor’s brother. One thing leads to another as Pauline still tries to deal with her broken marriage.
The story itself is rather boring with the writing maybe a step up from mediocre but not exactly what I would call good though Pauline is a writer with an MFA from Columbia, which is something she struggles with because she abandoned her writing career for housewifery and motherhood. The premise sounded interesting via the TV, and with how the show promoted it, I expected a better constructed story. I liked the emphasis of a mother becoming overwhelmed with sacrificing her dreams for her family. The book does give insight of the Myanmar refugee crisis in Thailand and other useful information, but I had hoped Pauline experienced a more entertaining adventure.
