Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

What's Mine and Yours by Naima Coster

23 reviews

ajseyler's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I think this may be one of my top books of the year. It was engaging and deeply moving. The characters are flawed (aren't we all?) but the depth of storytelling is so good, so you learn to love them for them. The ways in which the author communicates how complicated families are is beautiful; she has a way of allowing you to peer into the dynamics, the relationships, and the love between mothers, daughters, sons, fathers - it's really just so well done. There are likely connections made but the way she wove the story, there were moments where you were guessing or trying to make connections between the past and now. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence and Sexual content

djvill's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Just kind of an un-memorable book. I don't feel like I learned much about the time and place in which the book was set, and the prose wasn't interesting or literary enough to make up for the lack of plot. I suppose everything was meant to culminate in the big reveal, but it was disappointingly obvious

because of the amount of time spent on Gee and Nelson in their respective timelines

. Also detracting from the book was the character Margarita; I feel like it's extremely difficult to write an "influencer" character without making them one-dimensional, and that's all the harder when attempting to write that character's thought process.

That's not to say the book is without its bright spots (though these too come work caveats). First, for much of the book, I found myself thinking "it's been a while since I've met a character more complicated than Lacey May" (sadly, that didn't persist through the ending). Second, Coster's third-person narrator shifts to the perspective of a different character from chapter to chapter. I like that structure in theory--though it sagged under the weight of a sizable character roster, leaving some characters under-developed. But the structure does pay off in one particular blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment late in the book in which the perspective shifts mid-chapter right when two characters' paths collide. It's possible there were more of these mid-chapter perspective shifts that I just didn't notice. But I found it quite rewarding to imagine that the author had set up the rules of this structure only to break them at this crucial plot point. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction and Racism

Moderate: Gun violence, Miscarriage, and Death of parent

niquee3317's review against another edition

emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Gun violence, Racism, Toxic relationship, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Addiction and Drug abuse

lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I received a copy of this book as a gift.
"What's Mine and Yours" follows multiple points of view of different families grappling with racist decisions that greatly impact their individual lives. Gee's mother wants her son to have the best in his life, and that means attending the best school now that they have opened it up to black students. Noelle's mother will not acknowledge that Noelle is half Latina, and instead only sees her daughter as white. Noelle and Gee end up working together on a school play, and their worlds quickly become linked in ways neither expected.
I was excited to read this story because I do enjoy reading about the human struggle, but this book just did not click for me. I was never invested in the characters' stories, and I did not care what was going on. I think I was immediately drawn into one character from the beginning, but he is killed almost immediately, and I was very unhappy with this turn of events. Because of this, I did not want to connect to the rest of the story.
I think this book has its audience, unfortunately, that audience is not me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Infidelity, Racism, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Infertility

jamiejanae_6's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Bullying, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racism, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

beklovesbooks's review against another edition

challenging emotional

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

Really interesting non-linear format of moving forward and backward in time sometimes by decades other times by a month and each time changing whose perspective the story is being told from while overlapping in someway with the other storytellers and stories. It would have been helpful to start a timeline and list of characters at the beginning.

Overall a pretty depressing book as people are constantly using one another, tolerating neglect, and there’s just so much graphic emphasis on sex!

Interesting perspective of poverty, race, and generational trauma. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Physical abuse, and Sexual content

Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Racism, Xenophobia, Abortion, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Cancer, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Slavery, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Trafficking, Murder, and Pregnancy

briannad4's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Sexual content, Abortion, and Death of parent

Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Miscarriage, and Abandonment

d0505's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Gun violence, and Murder

Moderate: Infidelity, Miscarriage, Racism, and Terminal illness

spinesinaline's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was a stressful book as the first chapter opens with a death and I was immediately wishing for different futures for the characters. The main focus here is on intergenerational trauma and all the complexities of family and race, so it’s a tough one to get through but so worth it. 

The story regularly flips between the past and the present so we as the readers can try to piece together the two times and how things came to be, while also allowing for some mystery in the bigger reveals. I would love to reread this one knowing what I know now because there are so many subtle hints the author leaves throughout the plot and the character descriptions that seem so obvious after the fact. 

As much as I appreciated the interrogation of race in this book, I felt uncomfortable that the mixed Latinx/white character seemed to serve as the stand-in for whiteness. Noelle is the only one contending with her whiteness, recognizing the racial violence others have faced, and feeling the blame of the world, but she rarely gets a moment to examine the racial violence that’s been inflicted on herself, which doesn’t seem a deliberate exclusion that was meant to add to the story. I understand, as much as I can, the complexity of being a mixed-race person and dealing with the traumatic and colonial history of whiteness but it didn’t feel like the character’s Latinx identity was considered much at all. I’ll defer to Latinx and mixed-race reviewers on this and seek out how they felt about the authenticity of the character. 

It’s a sad story of loss in more ways than one and all the ways that may show up in our lives, as well as the devastating consequences when the grief and trauma from these losses are not addressed or recognized, or are beaten down. I appreciated the ending and the moments of connection and lightness that the author has managed to intersperse in quite a necessarily dark tale. I also loved reading the acknowledgements and seeing how the author’s own experience as a mother so clearly influenced multiple relationships in the book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Medical content and Abortion

kimveach's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was a good story with interesting characters.  However, I didn't like the back and forth between timelines.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Death of parent

Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Abortion, Murder, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism