Reviews with content warning for Grief - What's Mine and Yours

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

kimveach's review against another edition

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challenging dark 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

3.5

This was a good story with interesting characters. However, I didn't like the back and forth between timelines.

Content Warnings

ktdakotareads's review against another edition

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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

threeundertwopnw's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

ekmook's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

katsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective 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

4.0

“She hadn’t needed lectures or coddling; most girls didn’t. The needed choices.”

“She was an ignorant woman, dangerous. Another woman’s child was laid up in the hospital, and all that she could see was the imagined threat to her own.”

“It was too easy for people to see their interests and disinterests as pure, functions of their desires and personalities.”

“Maybe this was another way that she was white: the ease with which she could ignore calamity, focus mainly on what she wanted.”

“She wanted Gee to know this music was for him, that irreverence and rage weren’t just for white boys."

“Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”

I must be getting old because this is one of those books that I would never been able to enjoy five years ago. It is so realistic. The characters feel raw and real. They're lovable, yet utterly fallible. I felt like I was reading a memoir; that's how realistic it was. Following that vein, it also meant that there wasn't necessarily a big reveal or climax per se. I was honestly stunned when I turned the final page because I felt like it could just keep going and going. I think the reason this book was really compelling to me is because it explores so many of the subtle nuances of racism, even when it's internalized. It wasn't portrayed as this character fault that is eventually triumphed over. I could see pieces of the Ventura girls, and especially Lacey May in so many of my own relatives. This is the type of book that could be read in a classroom. There are so many layers.

Content Warnings

internationalreads's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-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

4.0

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