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wren_in_black 's review for:
Black Girl Unlimited
by Echo Brown
3.5 stars
**Special Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Company for an electronic Advance Reader's Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
Giving a rating to an #ownvoices book is difficult for me. I am not this author. I have not lived her experience. I do not share her skin color or her hair texture or her family demographic. I do not share her difficulties in life or her struggles. I love the exposure that all #ownvoices books bring to me and the way they make me think deeply about the systems I have benefited from as a white woman. In that regard, this book is no different. It will definitely provoke conversations about racial and gender inequality, both in the larger sense and in the "every day" sense of shades of skin color, prejudice in education and in the housing market, and a million other every day experiences for black people.
Magical realism is NOT my thing. If I had realized that about this book before picking it up, I probably would not have read it. This book does a decent job of magic its magical realism believable. At first I had a hard time believing Echo could be "quantum wizard". The name "quantum wizard" sounded ridiculous to me, but it grew on me over time. It was definitely not something in my reading comfort zone. It took time for me to get into the idea, but I liked it by the end of the book.
My only (and unfortunately sizable) complaint about this book is the constant skipping around of timeline and mergers of events. The author would often tell two or three events simultaneously, skipping only an extra line to indicate that she was not describing in a linear fashion. Sometimes I wouldn't notice the extra space and it would take me two or three sentences to realize that Echo was no longer describing the same thing as she was a few lines before. I actually like the IDEA of this technique, but I'm unsure of the execution. Sometimes these separate-but-smashed-together events were connected by an easily apparent common theme. There were the times that Echo's technique and risk paid off. Other times, though, these events were not so clearly connected and I was left slightly confused. I'm older than the target audience of for this book, and probably significantly more versed in literary technique than the target audience, so I recognized what was happening and pushed through any "hmmm" moments. I'm not sure your average teen reader would do that. I think the parallel events all told at once would most often turn into a confusing jumble.
This book tackled some HUGE ideas. It had wonderful things to say about them all. Usually I want a book to pick one or two major issues to address, but this one really tackled the intersectionality of these gender/social/racial/economic issues and I really appreciated that.
Overall, I couldn't believe this was a debut novel. Echo Brown has a talent for crafting a plot and a story. I look forward to what she writes in the future.
**Special Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Company for an electronic Advance Reader's Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
Giving a rating to an #ownvoices book is difficult for me. I am not this author. I have not lived her experience. I do not share her skin color or her hair texture or her family demographic. I do not share her difficulties in life or her struggles. I love the exposure that all #ownvoices books bring to me and the way they make me think deeply about the systems I have benefited from as a white woman. In that regard, this book is no different. It will definitely provoke conversations about racial and gender inequality, both in the larger sense and in the "every day" sense of shades of skin color, prejudice in education and in the housing market, and a million other every day experiences for black people.
Magical realism is NOT my thing. If I had realized that about this book before picking it up, I probably would not have read it. This book does a decent job of magic its magical realism believable. At first I had a hard time believing Echo could be "quantum wizard". The name "quantum wizard" sounded ridiculous to me, but it grew on me over time. It was definitely not something in my reading comfort zone. It took time for me to get into the idea, but I liked it by the end of the book.
My only (and unfortunately sizable) complaint about this book is the constant skipping around of timeline and mergers of events. The author would often tell two or three events simultaneously, skipping only an extra line to indicate that she was not describing in a linear fashion. Sometimes I wouldn't notice the extra space and it would take me two or three sentences to realize that Echo was no longer describing the same thing as she was a few lines before. I actually like the IDEA of this technique, but I'm unsure of the execution. Sometimes these separate-but-smashed-together events were connected by an easily apparent common theme. There were the times that Echo's technique and risk paid off. Other times, though, these events were not so clearly connected and I was left slightly confused. I'm older than the target audience of for this book, and probably significantly more versed in literary technique than the target audience, so I recognized what was happening and pushed through any "hmmm" moments. I'm not sure your average teen reader would do that. I think the parallel events all told at once would most often turn into a confusing jumble.
This book tackled some HUGE ideas. It had wonderful things to say about them all. Usually I want a book to pick one or two major issues to address, but this one really tackled the intersectionality of these gender/social/racial/economic issues and I really appreciated that.
Overall, I couldn't believe this was a debut novel. Echo Brown has a talent for crafting a plot and a story. I look forward to what she writes in the future.