Reviews

Stealing by Margaret Verble

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andyatx's review

emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

So hard to read at some points due to traumatic situations involving child abuse, but still beautifully written from her perspective.

Content Warnings

This is the heartbreaking story of a young Cherokee girl who is ripped from her family and sent to a boarding school back in the 1950s, when the government did such unconscionable things. This is a story of will, survival, and holding onto your heritage. The character development, especially of Kit, is amazing. The hypocrisy of ripping a child from a loving family and putting them in harm's way is taken straight from real-life situations that occurred back then. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Cherokee history and the history of removal of Native American children that occurred in the U.S. and Canada.

I received a free copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley. My review is volluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

kteq's review

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

4.25

I could’ve read decades more journal entries by Kit and it would still feel like not enough.

Content Warnings

swampette's review

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5.0

Sometimes you can tell from the very first sentence that you’re going to love a book, and that’s how it was with “Stealing.”

The story is told from the point of view of a child without ever feeling childish, but also without making Kit omniscient or giving her an implausible sense of maturity.

Every painful note rang true, including the end. Although it would have been more emotionally satisfying to tie the story up with a bow, the final pages provided clarity while preserving the intense realism of the rest of the book.

lhhrmn's review

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2.0

This book came highly recommended from a local bookseller, so I had high expectations, but I struggled to enjoy this one.

The Good:
- Native American representation, both in recounting a terrible time in history, lest we forget it & in having that representation come directly from a Cherokee author
- Kit is a spunky, independent girl and I can see her spirit in lots of other well-known fictional characters

The Bad:
- I expected this book to include a lot more of the "after", but it was almost entirely the before/during Ashley Lodard, so I felt like the relief and denouement I was waiting for never came, at least until the last 1/2 page.
- I wasn't prepared for the somewhat graphic sexual abuse Kit endures, especially repeatedly throughout her journal entries. It's always hard to read that, even more so from a child's perspective.
- The decision to tell the story entirely from Kit's perspective with seemingly random chapter breaks and unimportant tangents, while perhaps true to a child's voice, makes for difficult reading. I found myself annoyed waiting for Kit to get to the point, rather than endeared by it.