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A review by morganthebee
Whenever You're Ready by Rachel Runya Katz
5.0
Friends. This book. This. Book. Oof. I cried so many times, but it was so worth it.
Whenever You’re Ready focuses on the relationships between best friends Michal, Mia, and Jade and their close-knit (but a bit estranged for present-day Mia and Jade) friendship, and Jonah, Jade’s twin and Michal’s boyfriend. The story goes back and forth between present day and the past, so we’re witness to both the development of their relationships as children and young adults and the relationships in present day, three years after the loss of Michal to cancer as the remaining three embark on a road trip the best friends planned but weren’t able to go on before she passed.
We see Michal in the past, but also see how integral she is to the relationships between the other three, and how their grief at losing her has shaped them in the intervening years. They’re still grieving, and while they all love each other deeply there are unresolved issues that affect their relationships. The present-day parts of the story really delve into this and we get to see them working through these issues, hurts both inadvertent and intentional, and their grief not only over the loss of Michal but also over the strain within their own relationships. It’s all handled extremely well, and the characters are complex and flawed and just so real.
The road trip itself is an exploration of Jewish history, including some uncomfortable moments that delve into the issue of antisemitism, but also of racism within Judaism, particularly in the American South. I’ll admit that as a gentile I don’t have a lot of knowledge of Jewish history and this could have been heavy-handed, but Katz handles this with a deftness that never felt like it was lecturing while informing and acknowledging the complicated history, and particularly how that affects biracial and multiracial members of the community like Jade and Jonah, and to an extent Mia, although she isn’t Jewish.
I will admit I was a little worried after the first couple of chapters, when there was a lot of texting and the journey hasn’t yet begun, as I struggled with the formatting (which may be changed by the time this actually releases, so it's possible this will be moot) and figuring out who was who and whose perspective we were seeing from. After that, though, I was hooked.
I received a free ARC from NetGalley, but my review is unbiased and left voluntarily.
Whenever You’re Ready focuses on the relationships between best friends Michal, Mia, and Jade and their close-knit (but a bit estranged for present-day Mia and Jade) friendship, and Jonah, Jade’s twin and Michal’s boyfriend. The story goes back and forth between present day and the past, so we’re witness to both the development of their relationships as children and young adults and the relationships in present day, three years after the loss of Michal to cancer as the remaining three embark on a road trip the best friends planned but weren’t able to go on before she passed.
We see Michal in the past, but also see how integral she is to the relationships between the other three, and how their grief at losing her has shaped them in the intervening years. They’re still grieving, and while they all love each other deeply there are unresolved issues that affect their relationships. The present-day parts of the story really delve into this and we get to see them working through these issues, hurts both inadvertent and intentional, and their grief not only over the loss of Michal but also over the strain within their own relationships. It’s all handled extremely well, and the characters are complex and flawed and just so real.
The road trip itself is an exploration of Jewish history, including some uncomfortable moments that delve into the issue of antisemitism, but also of racism within Judaism, particularly in the American South. I’ll admit that as a gentile I don’t have a lot of knowledge of Jewish history and this could have been heavy-handed, but Katz handles this with a deftness that never felt like it was lecturing while informing and acknowledging the complicated history, and particularly how that affects biracial and multiracial members of the community like Jade and Jonah, and to an extent Mia, although she isn’t Jewish.
I will admit I was a little worried after the first couple of chapters, when there was a lot of texting and the journey hasn’t yet begun, as I struggled with the formatting (which may be changed by the time this actually releases, so it's possible this will be moot) and figuring out who was who and whose perspective we were seeing from. After that, though, I was hooked.
I received a free ARC from NetGalley, but my review is unbiased and left voluntarily.