This was the Barnes & Noble YA Bookclub book last month and my son, a regular attendee at the store where I work, told me I needed to read this book. So I did. And wow!!!
If you read and loved The Hate U Give or Internment or On the Come Up or When I Was the Greatest (I could go on but I think you get the point, and if you haven't read all of those get on that!)
This story is told in two voices and from the perspective of each of the two girls. Lena is a Black girl who has lived her whole life in the neighborhood the story takes place in. Campbell is a White girl and is new to the area, just moved in with her dad for her senior year of high school.
The girls don't really know each other but when a fight at a school football game they are both at throws them together and sparks protests that becomes a riot they must see past their differences to the main thing they share, the desire not to die and to get home safely. During the long night we get to have a view through each of their eyes and hear their thoughts. What we see and hear is that they both makes assumptions about the other and about the events of the night, and we see and hear their biases, which they aren't always they have.
But they must see past the words that the other has spoken which voice these assumptions or hint at them in order to survive.
I loved these two girls. They are both so strong and smart and vulnerable. The tension and pain the girls experience felt like it was leaking off the page and into me and it was at times so scary and worrisome.
It becomes clear they are both more than their skin and the other begins to see it too. In the time we are living in now this becomes an even more important story and a great lesson that needs sharing.
This is a must read!
(Finished Oct. 6, 2019)
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