Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - What's Mine and Yours

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

What's Mine and Yours by Naima Coster

19 reviews

niquee3317's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional sad tense medium-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

3.75

Content Warnings

lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

2.5

I received a copy of this book as a gift.
"What's Mine and Yours" follows multiple points of view of different families grappling with racist decisions that greatly impact their individual lives. Gee's mother wants her son to have the best in his life, and that means attending the best school now that they have opened it up to black students. Noelle's mother will not acknowledge that Noelle is half Latina, and instead only sees her daughter as white. Noelle and Gee end up working together on a school play, and their worlds quickly become linked in ways neither expected.
I was excited to read this story because I do enjoy reading about the human struggle, but this book just did not click for me. I was never invested in the characters' stories, and I did not care what was going on. I think I was immediately drawn into one character from the beginning, but he is killed almost immediately, and I was very unhappy with this turn of events. Because of this, I did not want to connect to the rest of the story.
I think this book has its audience, unfortunately, that audience is not me.

Content Warnings

beklovesbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional

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

2.25

Really interesting non-linear format of moving forward and backward in time sometimes by decades other times by a month and each time changing whose perspective the story is being told from while overlapping in someway with the other storytellers and stories. It would have been helpful to start a timeline and list of characters at the beginning.

Overall a pretty depressing book as people are constantly using one another, tolerating neglect, and there’s just so much graphic emphasis on sex!

Interesting perspective of poverty, race, and generational trauma.

Content Warnings

briannad4's review against another edition

Go to review page

slow-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

Content Warnings

spinesinaline's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

kimveach's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

myinfinitetbr's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

Content Warnings