"Those We Thought We Knew" by David Joy was our October Book Club pick and the summary and premise sounded incredibly interesting. Unfortunately, this just ended up being an overall "OK" book in my opinion.

 

We're following Toya Gardner, a young Black woman who is visiting her Grandmother in a small, mostly white, Appalachian town and is convinced that she can change the world, little by little. She comes here to tip the scales and make the white people see that whether they know it or not, they all might inherently be a little racist. We're also focusing on an additional newcomer to town, though this guy (He is so unimportant I forgot his name..Bill, maybe?) comes with a white hood and robe in his car, a handgun, and a list of local, high-level officials that might be part of something even bigger. Inevitably, tragedy strikes the town on two separate occasions, and we're left trying to figure out who did it, why they did it, and if the two tragedies are related.

 

Personally, I think that one of the only good things to come out of this book was that it opened the doorway to some difficult conversations that need to be had from time to time. Our book club in particularly was really able to discuss some of the things that were brought to attention here on a level that we might not have been able to otherwise.  However, on the opposite side of that, I don't know if a white, male author is the target person to write this book - especially when talking about the Black experience. I even checked the acknowledgements and did a little research to see if the author chose to work with a Black author to correctly portray that experience and to me it appears he did not. One member of my book club, however, did mention that while they agree with me, they also hoped that by a white author choosing to write about difficult topics, that maybe other white American's would pick this book up and be able to see something differently - and for that I can agree it might be a good thing.

 

I would add that while this book does have a tragedy that takes place and turns into a sort of mystery; you can see whodunit 3,000 miles away so if you're looking for an enjoyable and suspenseful mystery, this is not the book for you. There are probably 3-5 characters that are mentioned throughout that are absolutely pointless - they are basically there to attempt to throw you off and take up space.

 

I will say that Curtis - while not an unlikely important character - is a hoot. I chuckled a lot reading his sections and when I heard them on Audio I laughed even harder.

 

I really enjoyed the Toya's Grandma - she was a strong woman and I loved the the way that she fiercely protected her family. There really is nothing like a Grandmother's love.

 

The lady cop - whose name I can't remember - was also pretty cool and I'd have to say I'm happy with how things wrapped up on her end.

 

One final thing that I'm still trying to decide if I enjoyed or not was the ending of the book overall. I don't really feel that there was justice for all of the things that happened and I don't like that it was left sort of open subjectively that you have to determine how you feel or what you 'think' might have actually happened in those last few scenes. But, on the same point, a lot of times in these situations there isn't justice so maybe that was the point? I don't know but I'm not sure I'm satisfied with it.

 

Overall, just a book that I anticipated being really intriguing but left me a little flat. I don't know that I'll pick up any more of his books unless someone can really, really convince me otherwise.