A review by leandrathetbrzero
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

informative reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I am frustrated with Dawnie Walton’s The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, and that is not strictly because it is a mouthful to remember and type in full! My frustrations and disappointments come from my desire to love this book - for its massively important themes and messages about historical and present-day racism and oppression - but my inability to ignore the hypocrisy of certain characters…one of whom I am pretty sure we are meant to root for. The character I struggle the most to like is Opal, our fierce “Black Girl Magic” protagonist, and I wish this wasn’t the case. I LOVED the scenes involving television interviews or appearances (i.e., her appearance with Nev on Cavette is spectacular!). I did not love that she knowingly becomes the mistress of a married man and, after that man dies tragically, her nonexistent attempt to empathize with the narrator (the daughter of said man) or her mother (his wife).

Twice Opal’s best friend and stylist, Virgil, makes comments that infuriated me. Once, he scolds Sunny (the narrator) for questioning Opal’s sincerity, “her heart,” since that heart paid for all of Sunny’s education. Honestly, fuck that. As if Sunny owes Opal anything when, in reality, that money was what Opal felt she owed Sunny’s mother after embarrassing her and taking part in events that led to her husband’s death and left her daughter without a father. Sunny owes Opal nothing. The second comment from Virgil is something to the effect of suggesting that Sunny would find it difficult to understand just how many people Opal has helped or changed. Again, bitch, let’s get one thing straight. There are too many people to count who have done great things, and they 100% deserve acknowledgement for that, but if they have done terrible, selfish things, then they also deserve judgment and repercussions. One does not simply cancel out the other. And I felt like this book kept suggesting that it could, likely unintentionally, but it annoyed me.

Opal’s relationship with Nev also left a bad taste in my mouth because while he was
the “bad guy” in a sense,
the only flaw I could see outside of that was that he was described as “childish” at times when, in my opinion, in the scenes this childishness is described, I thought he was fully in his right. Opal betrayed him the first time by not confiding in him and letting him be caught off-guard, and then she abandons him when he is addicted to pills, which she is totally in her right to do, BUT when he gets sober and on track again, she walks back into his life to reap the benefits of a clean Nev. I would understand his “childish” reactions.

Moving on to the narrator, Sunny: I wish she had more backbone like her mother. I absolutely loved the chapter that includes her mother’s voice, and I wish more space was dedicated to her. Her entrance into the novel was actually when I was considering changing my 2-star review to possibly even a 4-star if it ended the way I thought it would (based on her mother’s words). Unfortunately, the ending was not what I hoped; it was what I dreaded.

Sorry to those who love this book. I am only just realizing that my love-hate relationship with a book is very dependent on its characters and my ability to root for/against them appropriately.
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