A review by sacajaguido
Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

4.0

In this novel, Octavia and Tali, two teenage sisters that spend more time arguing then talking, are sent on a road trip with their grandmother Mare. Now, Mare isn’t your stereotypical grandmother, she drives too fast, she smokes too much, and she dresses like she’s still in her 20’s. Octavia and Tali soon find, though, that there is a lot more to Mare then they had thought. The book is broken down into chapters told from Octavia’s perspective, little inserts of postcards that the girls send during the trip, and chapters told from Mare’s perspective during her time in the Women’s Army Corps during WWII. Octavia and Tali seemed a little flat character wise and you never really feel completely connected with these characters; the chapters that are told from Octavia’s POV seem like filler and don’t really move the story along much. Mare’s chapters, though, are filled with a wide variety of characters that each stick out in the narrative. The world of an African American woman in the WAC wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination and the author does a great job of showing the hardships that these women faced. What’s a real strength of this novel is that none of the characters seem fictional; each girl struggles with the world that they are fighting for in different ways and they handle what is thrown at them in such a way that everyone will be able to relate to at least one of the characters. So, overall the weaknesses of the chapters in the present are greatly overshadowed by the world and characters depicted in the past. I would recommend this book to readers from 6th grade up who enjoy reading historical fiction; this would be a great book for those students who are interested in learning about women in WWII.