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ukponge's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-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
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Rape
ashlurtis's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book is exactly the kind of story that insantly captures my imagination. Very near-future sci-fi. In the author's note, Cheeks talks about how fiction is a good avenue for exploring something like how a reparations act would actually work. That's exactly how this little book reads: as an exploration of a hypothetical idea.
There are some aspects of the plot that I felt weren't fully developed such as the main character's mother and her own relationship with her daughter. Purely as a thought experiment, I think the book is very good. As a work of written art, it could be better.
The epilogue ties things up maybe a little too nicely and leaves the book feeling more surface than I was expecting it to be. I think if there was more emphasis on the family dynamics OR more emphasis on the politics, the book would have been stronger. As is, the book straddles the line between the two, leaving the story feeling unfinished.
There are some aspects of the plot that I felt weren't fully developed such as the main character's mother and her own relationship with her daughter. Purely as a thought experiment, I think the book is very good. As a work of written art, it could be better.
The epilogue ties things up maybe a little too nicely and leaves the book feeling more surface than I was expecting it to be. I think if there was more emphasis on the family dynamics OR more emphasis on the politics, the book would have been stronger. As is, the book straddles the line between the two, leaving the story feeling unfinished.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Hate crime
mysterymom40's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Slavery
Moderate: Violence, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, Police brutality, and Bullying
Minor: Rape
sageypants's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
This was a pretty frustrating read. Another review here explains all my irritations pretty succinctly but to summarize:
I was interested in the premise and the exploration of different characters’ responses to a forgiveness act but the storytelling is empty and distant. So much more is told than shown. Entire scenes where a conversation between two characters could delve into their perspectives and reactions are often skipped with one sentence. For example, Willie meets up with a guy she’s interested in after spending a day at the archives looking for information. Instead of letting the dialogue unfold between them to either show her reluctance to get into it or her inability to keep her feelings from spilling out, we get a simple, “She told him about what she found.” This is constant through the entire book and ends up making it extremely difficult to connect to these characters. Interactions are brief and almost robotic. Characters feel more like they’re reciting a script than actually responding to each other. For a story with such intense subject matter, there is no intensity.
Even the main emotional plot involving Willie and her father’s business (which honestly felt more like a side story than the catalyst driving the actions of the main character) gets wrapped up with a pretty bow in a very very brief passage near the end after I’d nearly forgotten about it while she was learning about her family. I kind of wish Hank was dropped entirely and the focus was kept on the family — the business could still be in believable trouble without a Disney villain-like Hank there, and his random evil plot to frame the sub-contractors?? It felt as if it was aimed at children the way it got magically resolved in a few paragraphs by them magically finding this information at the end…
I also did not feel grounded in any specific time, it was difficult to get a grasp on the political atmosphere and how it had gotten to this point of forgiveness, but I will admit I was not very engaged when the president was giving speeches. They read to me like the empty platitudes of today’s politicians and it became very repetitive when the story would stop to update us on the progress of the act’s passing…
I did not know Maura Cheeks was a journalist before I picked this up nor was I aware this was her debut novel, but I am not surprised and I do agree that these issues likely stem from the way she’s used to writing.
I also think that for a book claiming to represent the reactions of different people in the family, the choice to mainly focus on Willie and Paloma is a weak one. Willie is a biased person… she’s literally personal friends/acquaintances with the imaginary president who passes the act, and Paloma is only a child. While both of those perspectives are interesting and have things to offer, i wanted to hear much more from Willie’s parents who had their own differing opinions on the act.
Last thing I’ll touch on since this is mostly an audiobook issue: I think what made this such a struggle to get through and may also have impacted my interpretation of the writing as flat in tone was the narration. It was very monotonous and only had variation for certain characters like Marcus when he was very upset.
As a general conclusion, I don’t mean to rag on this book too hard. It was a debut and it was tackling a pretty ambitious speculation of what would happen in this situation but through a very small scope. I believe there were a lot of great ideas here and a lot of great potential, but the execution fell very flat and ended up making this feel more like a draft than a complete story. I hope to see her writing keep evolving though in the future.
I was interested in the premise and the exploration of different characters’ responses to a forgiveness act but the storytelling is empty and distant. So much more is told than shown. Entire scenes where a conversation between two characters could delve into their perspectives and reactions are often skipped with one sentence. For example, Willie meets up with a guy she’s interested in after spending a day at the archives looking for information. Instead of letting the dialogue unfold between them to either show her reluctance to get into it or her inability to keep her feelings from spilling out, we get a simple, “She told him about what she found.” This is constant through the entire book and ends up making it extremely difficult to connect to these characters. Interactions are brief and almost robotic. Characters feel more like they’re reciting a script than actually responding to each other. For a story with such intense subject matter, there is no intensity.
Even the main emotional plot involving Willie and her father’s business (which honestly felt more like a side story than the catalyst driving the actions of the main character) gets wrapped up with a pretty bow in a very very brief passage near the end after I’d nearly forgotten about it while she was learning about her family. I kind of wish Hank was dropped entirely and the focus was kept on the family — the business could still be in believable trouble without a Disney villain-like Hank there, and his random evil plot to frame the sub-contractors?? It felt as if it was aimed at children the way it got magically resolved in a few paragraphs by them magically finding this information at the end…
I also did not feel grounded in any specific time, it was difficult to get a grasp on the political atmosphere and how it had gotten to this point of forgiveness, but I will admit I was not very engaged when the president was giving speeches. They read to me like the empty platitudes of today’s politicians and it became very repetitive when the story would stop to update us on the progress of the act’s passing…
I did not know Maura Cheeks was a journalist before I picked this up nor was I aware this was her debut novel, but I am not surprised and I do agree that these issues likely stem from the way she’s used to writing.
I also think that for a book claiming to represent the reactions of different people in the family, the choice to mainly focus on Willie and Paloma is a weak one. Willie is a biased person… she’s literally personal friends/acquaintances with the imaginary president who passes the act, and Paloma is only a child. While both of those perspectives are interesting and have things to offer, i wanted to hear much more from Willie’s parents who had their own differing opinions on the act.
Last thing I’ll touch on since this is mostly an audiobook issue: I think what made this such a struggle to get through and may also have impacted my interpretation of the writing as flat in tone was the narration. It was very monotonous and only had variation for certain characters like Marcus when he was very upset.
As a general conclusion, I don’t mean to rag on this book too hard. It was a debut and it was tackling a pretty ambitious speculation of what would happen in this situation but through a very small scope. I believe there were a lot of great ideas here and a lot of great potential, but the execution fell very flat and ended up making this feel more like a draft than a complete story. I hope to see her writing keep evolving though in the future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual violence, Hate crime, Physical abuse, and Racism
thecriticalreader's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Ahhh, I’m so disappointed! Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks was one of my most anticipated early 2024 releases. Reparations for slavery in the United States is a complex and fascinating topic, one that would benefit enormously from exploration through literary fiction. When people discuss reparations, they usually do so by quoting numbers, introducing hypotheticals, and arguing with ideology. I hoped that Acts of Forgiveness would add a more personal, human dimension to the topic of reparations, and in doing so shine light on the many nuances and complexities that come with implementing a national reparations act. And, to her credit, Maura Cheeks does try; the book earnestly imagines the hope, cynicism, anger, and complications a national reparations act would engender through the eyes of the Revels, an African American family desperately clinging to their status within the upper-middle class. Unfortunately, Cheeks’s writing keeps the reader at an arm’s length emotionally from her characters. Perhaps because of her background in journalism, she relies too heavily on telling instead of showing. As such, I spent the book feeling emotionally detached from its plot and characters.
Furthermore, Acts of Forgiveness attempts to juggle too many plot points, characters, and themes. The distance from the characters combined with the ever-expanding number of narrative threads created a disorienting and frustrating reading experience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Medical content and Classism
Minor: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Abandonment, Slavery, and Rape
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