I feel unable to review this book. It was not written for me. It was not necessarily even intended for me to possibly read it. This powerful message is written as a letter to his son, but I imagine speaks to all black people and, to a lesser extent, other peoples of color.

Read this book. Regardless of what color you are, read this. It's important. If you're in a position of power, read it twice. If you're in law enforcement, memorize it.

I am a white woman trying to understand more of the world I live in. I see racism, both casual and systematic, on a regular basis down here in Louisiana. It's a terrible part of reality. As Coates stated, one person can't change everything, but I'm down here doing what I can from my position of privilege. I don't think we'll see a world without hatred in my lifetime, but we can get closer if we keep working at it.

The very last action in this book was 100% expected, but still enjoyable. I still think things happened just a bit too quick to be believed, even with the gifts of the characters and everything was tidied up just a bit too much, but I'm starting the second one now so clearly it didn't bother me that much!

Also, love triangles get old, but at least this one was done mostly with humor.

I was quite impressed with this. At times, I did indeed forget that I was reading fanfiction. At other times, it was all too obvious that it wasn't a Rowling-original work. However, I am continuing the series and will happily be looking at Lippert's original works as well. :-D

How could I not love it!? And while he's mostly off-screen in this book, I think Dumbledore is perhaps at his finest here. Or at least his most fallible, that is to say - human. But he's also got such wonderful bits in all the other books that it's a really close call.

I always find it so hard to finish this final book of one of my favorite series. I always want to read it and find that Fred is still alive, or Remus and Tonks live, but I know that won't change. Instead, my reading these stories bring them back to life if only for a while. Immortality is found in the memories of the living.

Well, it made me almost cry, so that deserves a good rating... Then again, that may have been the alcohol crying. o_O

I did sort of expect a bit of the ending, but it was still pretty great. :-)

This was terrifying, fascinating, and informative. I love learning about individuals that have been ignored by history when they really shouldn't be. The story of Henrietta Lacks is impressive in scope and I'm happy to have learned about her, her family, her cells, and their impact on the medical world.

I expected the ending after a certain point and I think it's a fascinating twist that i will eventually adore, but right now I hate it!!!

This is definitely not my usual type of book. For starters, it's non-fiction; I like my reading to be an escape, but this came highly recommended and I'm glad I made the exception. It's also a crime book and, while I enjoy a good crime thriller, they pale in comparison to fantasy and sci-fi books for me.

Being from Louisiana, I vaguely recall these murders being in the news. Not much, because I avoid the news as a general rule, but enough that I remember getting a new pepper-spray because of it. I also remember gun shopping, but opting at the time not to get a handgun because I wasn't yet comfortable enough with guns. (Now I have and love my Sig!)

I will again repeat my first comment about maybe skipping the "key figures" part at the beginning unless you are not familiar with Louisiana name pronunciation; it really did just make things more confusing for me. I will also say that, while I learned a lot about the general case, I also am not interested in reading more about it or about other cases. While this might be the opposite effect that the writer was going for (I would imagine that all nonfiction authors want to inspire you to read more about their topic with their own works), it really did show me that true crime (is that what this is considered? I don't even know!) is not something I want to regularly read. I had nightmares all last night because of my overactive imagination. :-(

Considering that all of my knowledge about the case comes from this book (I know, I should have more sources to make an actual informed decision), I do feel that Jennings should probably do what Sorrento has done and get rid of their police department entirely. However, it sounds like the corruption might extend to other departments outside of the town. I'm not sure. I just don't see how a department so horribly run could not have been voted out of existence! Regardless, this sort of widespread corruption is what leads to the public distrusting law enforcement officers.

If you enjoy true crime type books, historical(-ish) books, or books about your home state, you will probably enjoy this book and I do highly recommend it. It was fascinating, informative, and worth the time. :-)