Book Details:
- Published Date: June 2, 2020
- Author: Brit Bennett
- Narrator(s): Shayna Small
- Genre: Historical, Fiction, Adult
- Format: Kindle/Audiobook
- Length: 350 pages/11h 34m
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise. (Amazon)
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I may be on the unpopular opinion side, but this book was just ok. The hype that came with this book is really what made me want to read it and give it a shot. The beginning of this book was just super slow for me. It took forever to get to the better parts of the story for me.
There were a lot of great points that were brought up in this story, but I felt those points lacked the depth they needed to really get the point across. Like, I just felt like there could have been so much more when it came to the important issues in the book.
So when you read this book, you get a story about two twins. One has a darker skin complexion (Desiree) and the other has a lighter skin complexion (Stella). They both run away during their younger years and end up being separated. Stella ends up living a life where she is passing as a white person. That alone, I just felt like it didn’t really get to the meat of how this affected their families as whole.
The book isn’t written badly, but I felt like there could have been so much more to the plot and that opportunity was definitely missed.
My Rating:
Have you read The Vanishing Half? What were your thoughts?
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