Reviews

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson

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jaydionne's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 ⭐️

ayami's review against another edition

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3.0

Ruth is a black woman who had given up her child as a teenager, as her family didn't want her to give up her scholarship for Yale. Years later, when confronted by her husband, Ruth starts struggling with her past choices and returns to her hometown in order to find her son. We also get a point of view of a young, white boy, but I can't really tell you what the purpose of his chapters was as I could never really figure that out. I would much rather read a point of view of the husband or the brother (or even of Ruth when she was young).

This is a perfectly good book. I can't say a bad word about the writing. Yet, somehow, it is also perfectly forgettable. Nothing really grips you here, despite the author's best efforts to inject some drama into the story (a shady adoption lawyer! cops going after a black boy with a toy gun!). Yet every point of tension by the end of the story finds an easy solution and the drama either leads nowhere or fizzles out.

I can easily imagine this book being a great book club book - not exactly exciting to read but it tackles so many issues (one might wonder if not too many issues at once), that it would give you plenty of discussion starters. I myself was hoping for a more nuanced and in depth story.

3.5 rounded down.

mgwalsho's review against another edition

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3.0

I really wanted to like this book way more than I actually did. The story was nice, and I enjoyed the characters, but that was basically it. The writing was only mediocre, and the shifting perspectives made it hard to really get to know any character. It also really bothers me when the blurb references something that doesn’t happen in the first 100 pages. For example, this blurb referenced a traumatic incident that didn’t happen until the very end. That is just annoying, honestly. Overall, this was a story that fell in the middle that should have either been really deep and excellent with amazing writing, or a fluffy story. It tried to be both and didn’t work.

truleejenann's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

mschrock8's review against another edition

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4.0

A story of a complicated family, a teen-pregnancy, family decisions and secrets and much more in a small Indiana town.

Zeta Reads picked this book after Good Reads posted a list of a book set in each state. Here we go, Hoosiers!