Reviews - The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

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12.4k reviews for:

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

James McBride

3.9 AVERAGE

rtbrck's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark reflective sad

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

libeika's review against another edition

3.0

Interesting enough but not my style of book

jilliangallagher's review against another edition

4.5

emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Content Warnings

susanneb01's review against another edition

3.0

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

“The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” is mostly set in 1930s Pottstown, PA. Chicken Hill is a struggling neighborhood of Black and Jewish families with Chona‘s grocery store as a focal point. When Chona, Jewish, physically challenged, an outspoken equal rights supporter, well liked by her mostly Black customers and neighbors, is assaulted, the neighborhood comes together, and not merely to free Dodo, the unjustly detained boy. I enjoyed most of the themes of this historic novel - humanity, love, kindness, immigrant life, the horrors of Pennhurst State School, the limitations/discrimination of life in a small, mostly white Christian town - but couldn’t quite relate to the spiritual/superstitious nature of some of the characters. Also, the writing is super detailed, and at times feels a bit unnecessarily lengthy.

yasminlibrarian's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Content Warnings

jaanareads's review against another edition

2.0

dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

This took me ages to read. I thought that the first 65% of the book dragged so much with character lore and backstory, and I really struggled finding the motivation to read it. I get now why some of it was necessary, but surely we didn’t need ALL that. There was an overwhelming amount of characters, all with at least one chapter dedicated to their lore and their own side plots that sometimes felt irrelevant to the main plot. It felt like way too much exposition, and I was just begging for them to get on with it. The last 35% picked up a bit though, or maybe it was just me forcing my way to the end.

I thought there would be a bigger twist of an ending and that it would end with a bigger bang or just feel more resolved, but I feel like it was sort of rushed, and it just petered out. I kind of figured out mostly what the ending would be as soon as they started planning for it.

I’m not positive why this book was so popular. Interesting commentary towards the very end though on immigrants and injustice in America, given the times.