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eyedoc's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Abortion, Addiction, Hate crime, Infertility, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Bullying, Death, Drug use, Grief, and Murder
sgrizzle's review against another edition
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I wanted to like this more than I did. It has a lot of structural elements that I generally do- multiple perspectives, told over time, but it just never quite came together. Too much was spent with characters who were ultimately secondary which left me feeling ultimately disconnected from what should have been the heart of the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Violence, and Racism
Moderate: Homophobia and Addiction
spinesinaline's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This was a stressful book as the first chapter opens with a death and I was immediately wishing for different futures for the characters. The main focus here is on intergenerational trauma and all the complexities of family and race, so it’s a tough one to get through but so worth it.
The story regularly flips between the past and the present so we as the readers can try to piece together the two times and how things came to be, while also allowing for some mystery in the bigger reveals. I would love to reread this one knowing what I know now because there are so many subtle hints the author leaves throughout the plot and the character descriptions that seem so obvious after the fact.
As much as I appreciated the interrogation of race in this book, I felt uncomfortable that the mixed Latinx/white character seemed to serve as the stand-in for whiteness. Noelle is the only one contending with her whiteness, recognizing the racial violence others have faced, and feeling the blame of the world, but she rarely gets a moment to examine the racial violence that’s been inflicted on herself, which doesn’t seem a deliberate exclusion that was meant to add to the story. I understand, as much as I can, the complexity of being a mixed-race person and dealing with the traumatic and colonial history of whiteness but it didn’t feel like the character’s Latinx identity was considered much at all. I’ll defer to Latinx and mixed-race reviewers on this and seek out how they felt about the authenticity of the character.
It’s a sad story of loss in more ways than one and all the ways that may show up in our lives, as well as the devastating consequences when the grief and trauma from these losses are not addressed or recognized, or are beaten down. I appreciated the ending and the moments of connection and lightness that the author has managed to intersperse in quite a necessarily dark tale. I also loved reading the acknowledgements and seeing how the author’s own experience as a mother so clearly influenced multiple relationships in the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Miscarriage, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Racism, Sexual content, and Violence
Moderate: Medical content and Abortion
myinfinitetbr's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
In Piedmont, North Carolina, a community is outraged when students from a predominantly Black school are brought to a mostly white school.
Told over the course of 30 years in the perspectives of a Black mother and her son, and a white mother and her half-Latina daughter; each mother determined to see her child have a better life. Their kids become involved in a school play together, and create ties that bond them for decades to come.
I really liked that the narrative included the perspectives of both families with the mothers and their teens. Though the characters were well written, I found my investment in them lacking, which may have been due to the frequent shift between timelines. I still enjoyed the commentary on family dysfunction, race, identity, motherhood, and the decisions that cause a ripple effect through generations.
⚠️ Addiction, Racism, Violence, Death of a Parent, Infidelity, Abortion
Thank you Grand Central Pub for the gifted copy! All opinions are my own
Told over the course of 30 years in the perspectives of a Black mother and her son, and a white mother and her half-Latina daughter; each mother determined to see her child have a better life. Their kids become involved in a school play together, and create ties that bond them for decades to come.
I really liked that the narrative included the perspectives of both families with the mothers and their teens. Though the characters were well written, I found my investment in them lacking, which may have been due to the frequent shift between timelines. I still enjoyed the commentary on family dysfunction, race, identity, motherhood, and the decisions that cause a ripple effect through generations.
⚠️ Addiction, Racism, Violence, Death of a Parent, Infidelity, Abortion
Thank you Grand Central Pub for the gifted copy! All opinions are my own
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Infidelity, Racism, Violence, Abortion, and Death of parent
ktdakotareads's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, Grief, Cancer, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Racism, Addiction, Cursing, Death of parent, and Medical content
Minor: Abortion, Violence, and Gun violence
beckbrl's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage, Violence, Gun violence, and Racism
Moderate: Abortion
catladyreads's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Sexual content, and Violence
elissareadsbooks's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Racism, Bullying, Violence, Medical content, Gun violence, Infidelity, and Miscarriage
Moderate: Abortion
Minor: Homophobia
bookishvanessa's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Infidelity, and Racism
Minor: Abortion, Bullying, Drug use, Miscarriage, and Violence
serendipitysbooks's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I’ve found it very difficult to review What’s Mine and Yours because a couple of things outside of the book really impacted my reading experience. The first is the flap copy and marketing which led me to believe the book focussed on one thing, when in reality that thing is only a very small part of the actual plot. My advice is to ignore the synopsis and go in blind. I ended up feeling disappointed because I was really looking forward to reading what I’d been led to believe the book was about. The second factor impacting my reading experience is that I had the really unnerving feeling that I’d read sections of this book before. They just felt so familiar to me and I’ve no idea why since it is a new release. But it kept distracting me - were parts of this book really similar to something I had read and if so what? Or was I hallucinating? I’m still none the wiser.
The book itself focusses on two families whose lives intersect at one point. Noelle and her two sisters live with their white mother Lacey May. Their Colombian father is in prison and their mother remarries, chiefly for financial security. Gee is Black. His father was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot and killed when Gee was six. His mother constantly pushes and wants more for him. The book switches between the two families and back and forwards in time. It obviously has lots to say about race and about parenting. There are some great individual moments but as a whole this book didn’t entirely come together for me. How much of that is the book, how much of it is the factors above, and how much is down to me I simply can’t say.
The book itself focusses on two families whose lives intersect at one point. Noelle and her two sisters live with their white mother Lacey May. Their Colombian father is in prison and their mother remarries, chiefly for financial security. Gee is Black. His father was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot and killed when Gee was six. His mother constantly pushes and wants more for him. The book switches between the two families and back and forwards in time. It obviously has lots to say about race and about parenting. There are some great individual moments but as a whole this book didn’t entirely come together for me. How much of that is the book, how much of it is the factors above, and how much is down to me I simply can’t say.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Violence
Moderate: Miscarriage