A review by katie_greenwinginmymouth
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

emotional funny sad fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved these stories, they had me laughing, crying, screaming out loud. I was totally in awe of how brilliantly each character came to life in such a short space of time.

The lives and relationships portrayed are so real, messy and authentic and brilliantly exposed some of the everyday hypocrisies that people fall into when trying to keep up appearances in their community, especially a church going one. All of the choices and decisions the characters made seemed realistic and true to the sort of people they were. I appreciated massively the fact that Philyaw has clearly written these stories for Black readers and does not mediate at all for a white audience.

I loved that there was such a mix of experiences here, and that there were positive relationships portrayed alongside the difficult ones - particularly I loved seeing realistic romantic relationships where one partner is feeling shitty and acts out of turn and the other partner, instead of falling into some tired plot device where everyone has to play hard to get, reacts with love and kindness and things work out 💖