A review by akemiwald
White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson

3.0

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The author, the cover art, the premise… it felt to me almost like the opposite of how I felt when I read Monday’s Not Coming. With that book, it felt kinda slow but then the build up was totally paid off with the ending. In this one, there kept being moments when it felt like it was gaining momentum and was about to lead up to something but then the ending caught me off guard by being anticlimactic to me. Having said that, I felt echoes of other works like Octavia Butler with all the references to change and the whole underground reminded of movies like Us or Parasite. There were glimpses of trying to fit in deeper themes around anxiety and mental health, marijuana criminalization, gentrification, and more but it seemed like there was too much too squeeze into the story to do them justice.