Reviews with content warning for Police brutality - Small Worlds

Caleb has to know that EVERYTHING he touches turns to gold. How on EARTH do I go from wanting to shake some sense into the Dad in 2/3 of the book to sobbing about his backstory in one Azumah-Nelson style second person chapter?! PLEASE 😭 I love the way that he infuses music and food within the lives of his characters. The music that fuels the main character and his community has its own life within the story. If I was able to put the book down, I would have dedicated time to chronicling the music via playlist.

The only critique that I have for the novel is that I wish he would have found different phrasings to describe the pockets of community, moments of joy, or intense experiences our main character came into contact with other than ‘small worlds’. The first time it was used hit hard but after that, it felt unnecessarily repetitive.

So many of the characters move from lost to found throughout the novel and their transformations are so glorious to watch. What is for you will never leave you. What is for you will find you. What is for you will come back to you. I can’t wait for his next release. Until then, this will stick with me ❤️

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peggy_racham's review against another edition

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4.5

"We’re all haunted in some way. All my dance moves are my father’s."

As Connan Grey said "I truely am my parents child."

Some things can not be helped.

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rworrall78's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad slow-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

4.0

For me this was one of those books that really comes together in a final closing scene of real beauty and joy.

The biggest message is about space, space to be, to love, to eat, to dance, to make music, to live. It debts delves into the racism, violence and oppression visited on Black bodies and Black lives by white supremacist thinking, media and policing.

So for that brilliance and I love it. Also for building such real characters.

Until the end the looping images weren't landing with me, so they seemed pleased with their own cleverness; a cleverness that just wasn't evident to me until the end. So I maybe love it more in hindsight than I did while I was reading it.

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