melissa_isreading 's review for:

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

2.0

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An American Marriage housed a story I could have liked buried beneath the meandering prose and baffling characters.

Roy was infuriatingly cocky. For example, he says his wife shouldn’t mind that he flirts with women and gets their numbers because 99% of the time it doesn’t go anywhere (cue eye roll). This made it hard to root for him when he is wrongfully imprisoned. Of course I wanted him to be released, but Jones never gave me a reason to care about him—or Celestial for that matter—as a character. The inciting event, Roy’s arrest, and everything else leading up to his conviction are glossed over so much that the reader doesn’t get a feel for the anguish he and Celestial have gone through. 

After that point, the book read like a recap of plot points. The characters make choices, but we rarely see why they make the choice or what led them to their decision. The author throws in sweeping, grandiose thoughts that feel like they are supposed to be an explanation, but they feel like too much of generalities to really explain anything. 

Celestial was the worst for this. The other characters I could at least attempt to understand, but she barely felt like a fully fleshed out character. 

And don’t even get me started on the passage near the end that talks about how a woman sometimes has to have sex because she owes it to someone. 

The epilogue was so abrupt. The book ended one way and the epilogue said just kidding, but again with no explanation of how they got there. 

Overall, this was a frustrating experience. This could have been a really interesting look at how a marriage could weather (or not) a horrible situation, but it needed to flesh out the characters more and expand on their decisions and motivations.