eileen_daly_boas 's review for:

In Every Mirror She's Black by Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström

4.0

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Three Black women in Sweden - I thought I could guess at how this story would go, and at so many points I was so wrong. For me, this straddled the line between a great, easy-to read story, and the kind of novel that makes you work hard. This is a good thing - it's got challenging moments, and there's a lot of characters, not all of whom I could keep track of. No characters are unblemished, and none are completely irredeemable. I haven't read many books with lots of Swedish in them, and so the fact that this does, while also being very much about the experience of Black and Brown women in the world was surprising in a good way.
The writing is strong, the scenes about desire and sex were not the best, though - they felt a little forced or maybe unearned to me.