midnightmarauder's reviews
61 reviews

Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclaire follows Agnes, a young woman in her early 20s who's trying to find herself. She feels stagnated in her life, as she's working a dead-end job as a maid for rich residents. The daughter of one of her clients, Emily, sees Agnes' disdain and offers her an alternative: sugaring.

Agnes grew up in a household where she was raised by her single mother, Constance, alongside her sister, Marlena, in a boring town Agnes calls "The Wasteland". Constance, a very religious woman, sheltered her daughters as much as possible and didn't really allow them much room to fly away from the nest. This caused Agnes to resent her and the life she had to live under her mother's watchful eye, which eventually lead her into sugaring. 

Agnes' decision to go into sugaring was definitely something she did initially to spite her mother. After getting caught in a lie about her whereabouts,

Constance puts Agnes out

. She has nowhere to go other than Emily's apartment in London that she shares with shares with three other girls/sugar babies: Yomawu, Sara, and Kiki. There, she is able to continue her endeavors with no judgement. Eventually, she grew to somewhat enjoy it. 

This book covered a lot of different themes. Aside from the theme of parental rebellion, another theme that was explored in the novel was how wanting a better life for yourself could lead you into destructive paths. At first, sugaring wasn't so bad to Agnes. She found one consistent person, Matthew, who she was able to explore with, alongside getting paid. But,

once that fell through

, finding someone else to fill that void took some more effort. The contrast between the amount of work it took for Agnes to make money from sugaring in comparison to her counterparts (i.e., Emily and the rest of the girls in the flat) was pretty big. Especially the amount of effort that her white counterparts (Emily and Sara) had to contribute. Sugaring also became stressful for Agnes when she eventually started to feel overwhelmed at being treated like a sexual object instead of a person (an aspect of sugaring that initially made her reluctant to try it). 

Stay with Me follows a Nigerian couple, Yejide and Akinyele (Akin for short), who have been trying for a baby for quite a while. But, when every attempt has failed, Akin's family pressures him to take on another wife, which he reluctantly agrees to. The book outlines the pair as they navigate through this new issue. 

In Nigerian culture, pregnancy is heralded as an important part of womanhood. So, when a woman cannot get pregnant, they are seen as less than. That was the case for Yejide. She was talked about by the members of her community and all the blame was placed on her, even though we later find out that

Akin is the infertile one

. She ends up visiting a "healer" who has her go through a ritual that would "help her get pregnant", and she experiences pregnancy symptoms soon after, which end up actually being

pseudocyesis

. This devastates her, so Akin takes it upon himself to help her get pregnant by

getting his brother to sleep with his wife at least once while she's ovulating

. Her pregnancy ends up being a success, and she gives birth to their daughter, Olamide. 

If Beale Street Could Talk is a novel that follows the two protagonists, Fonny, a young man who is currently in jail for rape, and his girlfriend, Tish, who finds out that she is pregnant while Fonny is serving his sentence. The book mainly follows Tish as she and her family attempt to get Fonny out of jail. 

The book is a romance novel through and through. The love that Tish has for Fonny and vice versa is constantly put on display. 

One of Our Kind is the fourth book by Nicola Yoon, and her first book aimed at adult readers. It tells the story of an idyllic, all-black suburb in California called Liberty. The protagonist, Jasmyn Williams, moves into the town with her husband, Kingston, and their son, Kamau. Jasmyn works as a public defender for inner-city kids; most of whom are black. She cares deeply about this fact and it is one of the reasons that influenced her to become a public defender in the first place. 

The book takes place sometime in 2020, where all eyes are on the Black Lives Matter movement and the countless police brutality stories that dominated news stations. Jasmyn is disturbed by the amount of hatred that the America (and the world as a whole) has for black people and does her best to change things. 

Jasmyn's husband, King, has been newly promoted as a junior partner at the law firm he works at. But, he also works part-time with at-risk youth at a nonprofit. After being in Liberty for a while, he drifts further away from his job, instead choosing to spend time at the town's popular recreation center, aptly named the Wellness Center. Although she initially doesn't see these changes in King right away, Jasmyn does notice that everyone who returns from the Wellness Center seems off in some way. On top of that, the people that visit the Wellness Center also push those who haven't been there into going. 

The book touches mainly on the topics on race, class, and the effect American slavery has had on the African-American psyche. Jasmyn seems to base her entire personality around the brutality that black people face. As a black person myself, I am not saying that it is unhealthy to care about what's happening to the group of people that look like you. However, obsessing over it to the point where it's all that you talk about is a bit much. 

To add on, for someone who was vocal about how much she loved black people and being black, she was extremely critical about the black people in Liberty being "not black enough". Whether it was complaining about some of the women using relaxer, or being too light-skinned, Jasmyn came off as whiny for most of the book. I know that protagonists aren't supposed to always be likeable, but she was so easy to dislike. 

Jasmyn initially has trouble making friends in Liberty because of the unsettling feeling the town gives her (alongside her own hypocrisy), but eventually finds two like-minded people to befriend: Charles and Keisha. Both Charles and Keisha are unapologetically pro-black and equally as curious as to why everyone in Liberty is acting so weird. Their respective spouses are also trying to push them into going to the Wellness Center, but they constantly refuse. Because the three of them are into social justice, they band together to form a BLM chapter in Liberty, and go around asking people to join. However, they're constantly turned away with each person saying something along the lines of, "I'd rather not think about police violence." The idea of a BLM chapter quickly fizzles out after Jasmyn finds out that

there used to be a BLM chapter in Liberty a year or so before she moved there, but it didn't last very long.

As it turns out, the BLM chapter was

written out of Liberty history on purpose as a part of a larger plan by Liberty, which was to turn their residents white and erase any memory of ever being black

.

Overall, this book was a slow burn. It took 99% of the book to actually reveal what was going on in Liberty. But, the reveal was definitely a surprising one. I've been reading some other reviews of the book on Goodreads, and I'm surprised that it's mostly negative. I feel like some of the negative reviewers misinterpreted the moral of the story. The book isn't saying that being white is better than being black or that the end goal of racism is to assimilate. The book is merely speculative. Fiction is fiction for a reason.

Silver Sparrow is the third book by Tayari Jones. The book is told through the perspective of two sisters who have largely led different lives, thanks to their bigamist father.

When people think of bigamy, they might think of a country like Egypt, where Muslim men are encouraged to take on multiple wives in accordance with their faith. Rarely, will someone bring up individuals in the United States as an example of bigamy/polygamy. But, in this novel, the issue is viewed through a Black American lens.

The first line of the novel reads, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist." This is said by Dana Yarboro, James' oldest daughter. She retells her life as her father's "secret" child. James had already had a wife by the time he met Dana's mother Gwen, and shortly after James' wife Laverne, gave birth to their daughter Chaurisse, Gwen pressured James to marry her so that Dana wouldn't be an "out-of-wedlock" child. Since Gwen was technically James' mistress and someone he only married to keep quiet, he works hard to keep his two lives separate and goes to great lengths to prevent Dana and Chaurisse (and Gwen and Laverne, for that matter) from ever crossing paths. This level of separation causes Dana to miss out on many dreams and desires that she wants, such as not being able to go to the college she dreamed of going to because Chaurisse picked it first, or being able to even meet her sister at all.

Grief is a big theme in the novel, particularly as it pertains to Dana. James is someone she knows is her father, but someone who is very inactive in her life. She only sees him on Wednesdays, which is his designated day of the week to eat dinner with her and her mother. James also makes it very clear that although he loves her, he does not love her enough to integrate her and her mother into his other life. Dana's mother is her biggest advocate, constantly pushing James to acknowledge her and Dana and own up to his mess. But, he refuses.

The other theme that is addressed in the novel is perspective. Dana lived a life where she was often ignored and pushed to the side in order to allow Chaurisse to shine, which caused a lot of resentment towards her and her mother. But, it is later revealed that Chaurisse didn't have this perfect life that Dana and Gwen thought, and that she was a flawed individual who had been dealing with her own issues with James.

What I loved the most about this book is how the flaws of the characters are put on display. I read An American Marriage prior to reading this book, and what I loved the most about that novel is how the protagonist, Roy, was greatly flawed. This is true for Silver Sparrow as well. Dana and Chaurisse are both flawed in their own ways, but these flaws are mainly created by the wrongdoings of their father, James. He is a self-centered individual who disregards his own daughter because of his own idiotic choice. He decided to cheat on Laverne and sleep with Gwendolyn. It was also his choice to not come clean about Dana's existence

until the end of the book (which actually wasn't something he willingly did; Dana had to expose the secret herself just to get him to acknowledge anything).

 

This is the third novel I've read by Tayari so far. All there's left to read is The Untelling, which I'm very excited to start. From all the books I've read by her so far, I know I won't be disappointed. 

An American Marriage is the fourth novel written by Tayari Jones. It follows the story of newlyweds Roy and Celestial Hamilton, whose marriage is put to the test when Roy is falsely accused of rape.

Roy and Celestial had been staying the night at a motel in the fictional town of Eloe, Louisiana, with plans to visit Roy's parents. Him and Celestial get into a small disagreement after

telling her that the man who raised him wasn't his biological father

, and he leaves their room to clear his head and fill their ice bucket. There, he meets an elderly woman who has her arm in a sling, also getting ice. Roy takes it upon himself to help the woman bring the ice back to her room. While he's there, he also helps out with her leaky toilet. Before leaving, he notices that the doorknob to her room is wonky, and brings the issue to her attention. Later that night, the woman is assaulted, and as Roy was the last man she laid eyes on that knew about the broken doorknob, she accuses him as her assailant.

The book's central theme is how racism and the justice system go hand in hand, and how a false accusation can affect someone in different ways. The race of the woman who was assaulted is never explicitly stated, but it can be assumed that she was white. Being that Roy is a black man in the Deep South at the time, it was his word against that of hers. Despite him and Celestial maintaining their alibi, the prosecutors sentence Roy to 12 years in prison.

The pair try their best to make the marriage work, the effort of which is told through a series of letters. Celestial takes the time to visit Roy as much as possible and put commissary on his books, while Roy tries to maintain his sanity. Early into Roy's sentence, Celestial writes to tell Roy that

she's pregnant, but being reluctant to bring a child into the world, he quietly asks her to have an abortion.

This breaks Celestial and puts a further strain on the relationship. For a while, Celestial stops responding to Roy's letters and absorbs herself into her hobby, dollmaking. Eventually, she grows tired of the distance between the two of them and lets Roy know that

she no longer wants to be his wife, subsequently beginning a relationship with her childhood friend, Andre.

In my opinion, a good protagonist is one that is imperfect. I felt that Roy Hamilton fit that bill. He was flawed from the very beginning, from the manner in which he was brought into the world to the day of his release from prison. That doesn't mean that I liked him, however. I felt that he was quite selfish throughout the course of the novel, from the moment he met Celestial to the dissolution of their relationship. Some may interpret him differently, possibly saying that he developed into a selfish being during the time he spent in prison, but I don't agree. One of the biggest things I hated about Roy was his blatant misogyny. He often treated Celestial as if she were his property instead of a separate human being. This shows the most toward the end of the novel when he

confronts Andre about him and Celestial's newfound relationship.

He feels as though Andre has "stolen" Celestial away, and that Celestial should have waited all that time for him because he, and I quote, "would've done it for her". Also, there was a part of the novel after Roy is released and sees Celestial that he practically tries to force himself onto her. She isn't interested in having sex with him, but he pushes and pushes. When she does reluctantly give in, she asks that he use protection. Roy is greatly offended by this, feeling as though he was entitled to have sex with his wife whenever he wanted, and it is shown in his monologue that he considers

raping her just because he "knows that he can".

Thankfully, he doesn't go through with it, but the fact that he contemplated it for even a second grossed me out. Both Celestial and Andre's patience and capacities for forgiveness was absolutely phenomenal, because I would've never given Roy any grace for his behavior. Roy's thoughts and actions were disgusting, regardless of if prison made him that way or not.

Overall, I loved the way this novel was written. It is the second book I've read by Tayari, the first one being her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta. I read that book rather quickly, so I'm not surprised that I was able to finish this one at the same speed. 

Blackout is a collection of short stories written by a multitude of black female authors, including Nicola Yoon, Angie Thomas, Dhonielle Clayton, Ashley Woodfolk, Nic Stone, and Tiffany D. Jackson. The book follows a group of different characters in New York City as they navigate being stuck in a blackout.  

There are six stories that make up the novel, each with characters who are trying to get to a block party in Brooklyn. The following stories are: 

I enjoyed this novel so much! My personal favorite stories had to be Made to Fit and Mask Off. I love anything that includes lesbian/gay characters, and I felt that both Nic and Ashley handled the portrayal of being a gay/bi teenager very well. 

Adventures in Awesomeness is the second installment of the Tiny Titans comic book series. 

Currently, I'm trying to read all of the Tiny Titans comics. I loved them as a kid and wanted to revisit them as an adult.