This was a really interesting book, but it was also very hard to read because of the continued, yet true, references to how doctors and scientists thought of (and sadly in some cases still do) think about people of color when it comes to experiments or medical procedures. There were more than a handful of times that I had to put it down and take a break and ‘cut’ it with other lighter books because, as amazing at the HeLa cells are, it is tragic what happened to this woman and her family. One of the parts that got me the most was the fate of Elsie Lacks, Henrietta’s eldest daughter.

This book was real, and Rebecca made it a point to state that she stayed authentic to how the people spoke. She didn’t sugar coat anything or make them sound any different than they were and that added to the realism because you could tell that she was pretty much copying everything verbatim. Many times, with biographies or books of that nature, language is ‘prettied’ up which brings a sense of falseness to the book. None of that was here, at least to me. I enjoyed, as much as I could, the journey of Rebecca and Deborah in finding out what happened to Henrietta and how her cells were helping. Yes, there is a bit of a problematic aspect that it took someone outside of the family and their ethnic background to get this done and I’m sure most people would ascribe that to the ‘white savior’ aspect. But it didn’t seem that Deborah minded the help since she ultimately just wanted to know her mother and this helped her too. I think that is what I really liked about this; that ultimately it was a journey for a woman to learn more about her mother and the type of woman she was because was robbed of that. Personally, I feel a lot of that was on the doctor’s and their dismissal of Henrietta as a person as I doubt that a misdiagnosis of that magnitude would have been made if she weren’t a Black woman. And it’s been said many times, but it bears repeating that it’s a new level of tragic that Henrietta’s cells have done so much for science and medicine, and her family can’t even afford basic health care.

This is a great book and one I think everyone should read but be warned there are parts that will likely make you have to put down the book. For me one of those moments was reading about something called pneumoencephalography and what it entailed. This is not an easy read by any means but it is an important one to learn more about the history of science, medicine, and how specific groups of people were treated in our country in the past in hopes of not repeating it in the future.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. This was yet another one that I had to wait awhile to read, since I heard about the book months before it was slated to be published. There were many reasons I was excited to read this. One was that it fit one of my personal book challenges of a book with an astrology or zodiac term in the title (I’m counting ‘moon’ cause it’s my personal challenge). There was also a lot representation in it, including a non-binary romance interest and a main character with a differing ability. However, it ended up falling short of my expectations by a fair margin and was just okay.

The main thing for me is that there was a lot of exposition that we had to accept. There wasn’t a lot of background given on Nova and Tam’s friendship, let alone romantic relationship. They essentially jump into one right at the end of the first chapter when I would have liked to know a bit more about it. I would have also liked to know more about the characters overall. I’m not necessarily against insta-love but I still need a reason or explanation as to why it happened otherwise it is pretty much insta-lust. Also, they never really stated what their ages were although there were multiple references to ‘high school’ so one would think they had graduated but it was never specified. While not a huge deal in the long run, it was one of the small things that ended up kind of bugging me.

Again, I really enjoyed the representation here, but I would have still liked to know more about their history. It was obvious who the villain was going to be, even if the ‘why’ behind it was a bit of a surprise. The brief glimpses into Nova’s family were also nice but they were just that…brief. No explanation on what happened with her parents, why there was a pigeon-headed cousin (I think?) or anything of that nature. I’m not sure if there was a prequel that was released that I missed but I felt like I had walked into a movie halfway through with this book.
It was cute but to me there wasn’t much else going for this story. I finished it in about a day which is the case for most graphic novels, but I wouldn’t re-read it and I’m glad I waited to get this from the library.

This one took me awhile to get through for a handful of reasons. One was that I kept getting distracted by other books, which has happened before and is something I will actively be working on as a book goal in the new year. Another is that I read the second book first and already had a spot in my heart for Portia. So reading about someone disparaging her, even lovingly, was a bit much. Plus the premise was based on a lie which can be a bit hard to get over. All that being said I did enjoy this story and once I finished it, promptly picked up the third one since I read it out of order.

I was prepared to dislike Prince Thabiso at first, and I did but I warmed up to him a bit quicker than I though. I could sympathize with Ledi and how stand-offish she was with all the knock downs she had gotten in her life. I enjoyed how the mistaken identity aspect was figured out quickly to work on their relationship and each of them getting over their preconceptions about each other. A lot of this story was about forgiving past misunderstandings, learning to trust again with no real reason to, and that family may be where you least expect it. The 'mystery' aspect was a bit easy to figure out and I was there was a little more exposition on why Ledi's parents left since I still feel that was vague. But overall an enjoyable read.

Not my favorite in the series by far and I can't comment on what that might be yet since I'm still reading the third full novel and only read one of the in-between novellas. But it was cute and enjoyable.

There will be spoilers in this review.

Like most other readers, I love books about books so the idea of communicating and revisiting the past through mailed books snagged my interest. However, that didn’t hold up well in the long run since the reason they were sent ended up not being as mysterious as otherwise set up. I’m not sure what I was expecting from this book but what I got wasn’t it. I never like recapping a book in my reviews, so I’ll just jump right into it.

First, let me say that I did enjoy the back and forth in the narrative. This helped to draw out the anticipation as to what happened to make Robin run away and come back. It was also a nice way of unfolding her parent’s crimes which lead Robin to live with her grandmother. I also enjoyed the exchange of books and poems and the remembrances Robin shared of those. I will say those aspects were beautifully done.

However there wasn't much past that to make me really enjoy this book and that was in large part due to the cast. The only likeable characters were Dawt Pi, Dave, and Ryan. That’s about it. Everyone else was some brand of terrible. Even the grandmother wasn’t very likeable, which feels bad considering what happened to her. I realized halfway through I wasn’t enjoying a majority of these characters I wanted to see how it all ended, what the big betrayal was, and I had used one of my Hoopla credits to renew it. So I kept on.

When the attack on the grandmother happened in the past is what turned it for me since that came out of nowhere and, at the time, seemed thrown in for shock value. We were left guessing as to why but didn’t really figure it out until the end. This is related to another twist I had trouble with; the introduction of Billy. This happened at almost 60% through the novel and brought up yet another twist that it was Robin’s mother, Lindy, who did the killing. Then to only turn out to find out that Billy was the ‘real’ bad guy who did the killings and that he came looking for the letters that would incriminate him and attacked the grandma. None of which really came to fruition until almost the very end.

All of these seemed thrown in simply to keep us guessing, while trying to keep up the literary theme that it started out with. I get that was put in likely due to trying to get into Robin’s mindset, but that close to the end it seemed thrown in as a last ditch effort to make is go, "What a twist!!"
The reunion with Peter was just too neat. After just leaving town with no explanation and so many decades I expected more conflict. If you ignore me for two months, let alone two decades, and then show up suddenly, I'm not going to be the one reaching out to you. Then, there was a brief moment where Robin said she felt herself drawing back because he turned her poems in because ‘He didn’t have the right’, which made me want to throw my phone. That was quickly disposed off but even the fact that the thought was entertained to make this drag on longer had me groaning.
There are some books that can straddle multiple genres well but, for me, this was not one of them. I'm not even sure what genre it can be put in. It felt like the author had all these different ideas they wanted for a story and tried to cram it all into one. The synopsis would leave us to think it was a romance, but then other reviews have likened it to Christian fiction. I am going to take a stand and say that it is not because mentioning God in passing or as an aside for the majority of the tale does not a Christian book make. Overall I feel like this book had big ambitions and ended up falling short of the potential that it had.