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notesbynnenna 's review for:
What's Mine and Yours
by Naima Coster
I’ve realized over the years that I’m a sucker for a good family saga and this one certainly delivered. I had no idea what it was about going into it, but ended up reading it over the course of a day because I was sucked into the story (and also I was on a deadline as I picked it up two days before book club!).
This is about family dynamics between mothers and fathers and their children, between sisters, and between friends that become family. I love books that feature sister relationships and I loved learning about the three sisters in this book: Noelle, Margarita, and Diane. They each had such distinct personalities and chose to live their lives differently, but at the end, they are still family.
These characters felt so real, not just the sisters, but many of the characters in the book, and I was sucked into their orbit. I had to know what happened to them. This book is about families and how you can’t always choose them. It also explores childhood trauma and how that shapes people and affects their lives going forward. Are children responsible for the mistakes of their parents? Are they destined to be “bad” people if they come from “bad” stock? But none of these characters is 100% good and 100% bad; this story is far too nuanced for that binary and I appreciated that as it felt true.
We also see how certain choices drastically alter the course of these characters’ lives. And Coster writes about the themes of race and class in this small town in North Carolina. What does it mean to grow up on the “right” side of town and have access to certain opportunities? As the years pass and society changes and things become more inclusive, you still have plenty of people fighting to maintain the status quo and feeling threatened by the changes. In one scene characters are having a conversation about an incident that happened in their neighborhood where some new neighbors were accused of trespassing and not belonging, and the person telling the story couldn’t even say that the new neighbors were Black and that’s why they’d been harrassed. And that’s in 2018. Just another reminder, in case we could forget (but we can’t) that this country has a long long long way to go.
I got lost in this story for a day- it was an excellent read and I feel like I’ll be thinking about it for a while.
This is about family dynamics between mothers and fathers and their children, between sisters, and between friends that become family. I love books that feature sister relationships and I loved learning about the three sisters in this book: Noelle, Margarita, and Diane. They each had such distinct personalities and chose to live their lives differently, but at the end, they are still family.
These characters felt so real, not just the sisters, but many of the characters in the book, and I was sucked into their orbit. I had to know what happened to them. This book is about families and how you can’t always choose them. It also explores childhood trauma and how that shapes people and affects their lives going forward. Are children responsible for the mistakes of their parents? Are they destined to be “bad” people if they come from “bad” stock? But none of these characters is 100% good and 100% bad; this story is far too nuanced for that binary and I appreciated that as it felt true.
We also see how certain choices drastically alter the course of these characters’ lives. And Coster writes about the themes of race and class in this small town in North Carolina. What does it mean to grow up on the “right” side of town and have access to certain opportunities? As the years pass and society changes and things become more inclusive, you still have plenty of people fighting to maintain the status quo and feeling threatened by the changes. In one scene characters are having a conversation about an incident that happened in their neighborhood where some new neighbors were accused of trespassing and not belonging, and the person telling the story couldn’t even say that the new neighbors were Black and that’s why they’d been harrassed. And that’s in 2018. Just another reminder, in case we could forget (but we can’t) that this country has a long long long way to go.
I got lost in this story for a day- it was an excellent read and I feel like I’ll be thinking about it for a while.