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I liked The Vanishing Half slightly better but this was still a pick & Bennett is an automatic read for me. The story covers so many areas: friendship, parent-child relationships, as well as other hard topics like suicide & abortion. The impact of decisions & the long term consequences that impact the lives of Nadia, Luke & Aubrey. #bookspin #readyourkindle

I found the different perspectives from the three main characters really interesting. So many difficult hard hitting topics were dealt with in this book but I think she did so perfectly. Couldn‘t put it down 🙌🏻
#pick #themothers #britbennett

This books opens with Nadia Turner, a young woman whose mother has committed suicide, + whose father has retreated into his grief and is working for the local Christian Church. When Nadia falls for injured ftball star/son of the preacher she faces a decision
#aboutreproductiverights that impacts on the rest of her life. A compelling story about young lives, religion, grief, and paths taken @Cinfhen @BarbaraTheBibliophage @alisiakae @booked2023

• TBR since April 21, 2020

#StoryGraph: fiction contemporary literary emotional reflective sad

#OUABC 2023 Reading Challenge: 40 Prompts (30. A Book that's been on your shelf the longest)

3.5 stars, rounded to 4

Publisher‘s Description:

Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret.

Good one! Quick read.

So far I‘m really enjoying this book.

Having read the Vanishing Half last year, I was really looking forward to this and it didn‘t disappoint. I really loved the book and found the carefully woven tapestry of the different types of mother fascinating and insightful. To be a mum, to want to be, to not being able to be . Each story is told in such a clever thoughtful way that it evokes so many different feelings in the reader. A book full of soul, I‘d highly recommend it to others. 5 🌟

This one has been sitting on my Kindle for awhile.Bennett writes beautifully, her respect for her characters as they struggle with many situations growing up & how those decisions ripple out to influence others .I love that it took place in Oceanside ,Ca. ,a place that draws Marines & tourists to its beaches.Love ,friendship,loss,church ,& community all play a role. The Mothers are the church ladies that sit in judgment of us all. Loved this book!

Happy #caturday My cats are eating breakfast but at least I have my cat mug.Yes , there will be some housework & baseball watching, also reading these 2 this weekend.

I‘ve read The Vanishing Half twice, watched several Brit Bennett author interviews, and all while her first book sat on my shelves. it‘s okay because I think I enjoyed this more hearing Brit how her narrative was neither political nor pushing her beliefs about reproductive rights. The church-lady Greek chorus was a fascinating way to show what we cannot understand from the outside looking in.

I did my first month of #bookspin in April 2021, and knocked 15 books off my TBR!! I‘m looking forward to a full year of fun and inspiration in 2022. Thank you, Sarah, for being our fearless leader! #bookspin2021roundup #doublespin #bookspinbingo

Beautiful debut from an author I am really excited about. Bennett‘s way with words got me right in the feels so many times. I did something I haven‘t felt compelled to do in awhile - write quotes and passages down. Bennett captures the voices of her characters, especially the omnipresent and judgmental church mothers, with a realness that sticks with you long after the last page. 4⭐️ #wintergames2021 #averymerrybingo #bookspin

Highly recommend. I enjoyed this more than the Vanishing Half. Really appreciated the interesting and unpredictable human characters, who found themselves in situations we‘ve read about a hundred times but didn‘t follow up with the expected reactions or responses. The narration split between the main characters but also an amorphous ‘mothers‘ of the church with their gossipy style judgement was uniquely intriguing without feeling trite.

The impact of a choice made in high school amongst a couple in church centered community. I found these characters a delight to get to know and the heartbreak amongst the love triangle, and the loss within families, so entrancing.

Interesting style of writing. We meet Nadia, Luke and Aubrey whose lives are connected dramatically. In addition to hearing the story through these characters, we also hear the Greek chorus of the mothers, who are the elderly members of the Upper Room church. IMO the mothers and the pastor‘s wife are extremely judgmental and legalistic rather than being Christlike (living unconditionally, supportive, accepting). Great book.

The synopsis on the back of this book says it‘s about a love triangle. But the way it‘s written makes it about so much more than that and elevates it into a book about friendship, love, community, faith, secrets, regret, choices and the flow on effect of grief.
The writing was so compelling, I was hooked right from the start.

Currently reading The Mothers by Brit Bennett and also decided to visit the library. It's been so long.

So excited for these!

#libraryhaul #tbr 🤍

Wow, Brit Bennett can write! This was an awesome read. Brit is the author of The Vanishing Half, this was her debut novel, and an excellent one at that. Nadia the main character I just adored. This novel is about what choices you make and how that choice affects many other individuals. Loved it! #BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

#Maternal
#MayCharacters
#TBR 📚📚📚

An inside hurt was supposed to stay inside. How strange it must be to hurt in an outside way you couldn‘t hide.

I don‘t know who donated this to the library used book sale, but thank you for the signed first edition surprise! Best dollar I‘ve spent all year and I didn‘t even know until I got home and opened the book.

#AnyWayYouReadathon Book 2
#MarvellousMarch #Readthon Book 1

Unpopular opinion.
Maybe I misinterpreted this book, everyone seemed to love it so much, but it struck me as a depressing, moralistic, shaming tale. The way the themes were used felt like it had an agenda that didn't sit right with me.

@kimmypete1 @MidnightBookGirl

@Andrew65

This one has been on my list forever. I‘m so glad I finally read it. It definitely lives up to the hype! Really wonderful book. And one of my favorite covers!

“All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we‘d taken a moment to swish this one around in our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season.”

#LovePrevails Day 18: Nothing compares, indeed, to a #MothersLove. With my queer faery.

Every choice the various characters make stick with them and influence everyone/everything throughout their lives. This often causes a lot of unresolved, tangled feelings, and the question of “what if” constantly trails them. This is a coming of age and beyond story told with lyrical prose, and chapter intros told from the point of view of the elderly “mothers” of a church - like a Greek chorus, wanting to advise, but only able to set the scene

There was a big hype around this book when it was first released and I ignored it. Then last year I read The Vanishing Half with @litsybookclub and immediately put this book on my TBR.

This was awesome, even though it started out slow for me.

Finished listening to my 2nd #NewYearWhoDis read this morning. I was sure I had a copy from a 2020 Penguin Random House offer, but I didn‘t locate it. Libby to the rescue!

This is a book I think I‘ll appreciate more and more as I sit with it a bit. I‘m thinking about the characters and where their paths crossed. Their choices really did impact everyone‘s trajectory.

Looking forward to Bennett‘s second book, which is definitely on my TBR shelf!

More books should have Greek choruses.

This is not a book that you "love". This is a book that sits with you, taking up space in your body long after you've finished. I'm left unsettled by it, in ways that feel purposeful and thoughtful. If you need clean resolutions, this is not the story for you. It is a messy and unresolved part of the life of three young people as they grow and make choices, good and bad, and move through the consequences.

"It was strange, learning the contours of another's loneliness. You could never know it all at once; like stepping inside a dark cave, you felt along the walls, bumped into jagged edges."

#WeeklyForecast

Will I finish any of these books this week? I dunno... but I‘ll enjoy trying!

Libro.fm have a quiz to get you started in 2021! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

https://blog.libro.fm

Such a powerful book. I have been meaning to get to this one for forever and I wish I had read it sooner. It‘s just so well written and the story is strong. It handles so many hard topics and I loved the way it all came together. It‘s a story of love and friendship and family and the secrets we keep. Excellent book.

As each year closes I enjoy looking back on my top reads of the year - books that stuck with me and made a mark. My 2020 list contains 13. Not pictured: The Mothers by Brit Bennett, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

Better late than never, especially considering #TheVanishingHalf won BOTM's Book of the Year and it wasn't my favorite of the year. So far, I'm liking The Mothers better!

Day 1 of #12booksof2020

Not a book published this year, but I think my favourite new read of the year, The Mothers. So much food for thought in this one - had me hooked right from the beginning.

As you can see from my TBR stack (books under The Mothers), I loved it so much I immediately went out and bought The Vanishing Half!

I liked it. I didn't love it, but I'm glad I read it. I do like the way she writes. The story wasn't what I was hoping it would be. The ending was interesting, how it looped back to the perspective of the mothers -->

"We see the span of her life unspooling in colorful threads and we chase it, wrapping it around our hands as more tumbles out. She‘s her mother‘s age now. Double her age. Our age. You‘re our mother. We‘re climbing inside of you."

I can‘t decide if I liked this more than The Vanishing Half. Both excellent and I love how Bennett writes..... I do wish she‘d added more to a certain main character‘s story, just for a bit of closure. It leaves it up to the imagination, which is the point, right? 😁 Definitely recommend this ⭐️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A novel about friendship, love, loss, and grief, The Mothers pulled me in and didn‘t let me go until I read the final page. The characters were real and imperfect, flawed and beautiful - each dealing with inescapable tragedies of their pasts. 💜

We didn‘t believe when we first heard because you know how church folk can gossip.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

I cannot put this novel down. Having loved The Vanishing Half earlier this summer, Brit Bennett is officially a “must-read” author for me.

I was really looking forward to this one after loving The Vanishing Half and, in fact, I think I slightly preferred this one.

I loved the chapters narrated by the ‘mothers‘ of the title and could empathise with all of the 3 MCs, particularly when they made ‘bad‘ choices that impacted on all of their lives for years to come.

#bookspinbingo #doublespin

What an interesting perspective Bennett used here! One of the voices of the book is the “mothers”, the elder ladies of the local church. I really liked that.

I thought The Vanishing Half was a little better, with characters I wanted to know more about. But this was a terrific debut. 👍

Can I just say that Luke was super irritating? I really felt for Aubrey and wanted things to work out for her. Anyone else think that Miller was her soulmate?🤔 I can‘t believe we‘ve finished another round of LMPBC. This was a great book Jenni. I ❤️ when I get mad at characters or have any strong feelings when reading. 3/5👣s

Picked this one up after loving The Vanishing Half (and being drawn in by the cover!) I didn‘t read any reviews so I guess I assumed something totally different from the title. I kept thinking this just wasn‘t the book I wanted. Putting that aside, I did find the story and characters interesting and appreciated the complexity and reality of the relationships.

Brilliant story, great writing, interesting characters and very readable.
Liked the female relationships throughout, whether good or bad. And the over reaching Mothers 😊😊

Love it when you find a book from your list in the charity shop!

😭

Brit Bennett writes gorgeous literary prose, and on top of that, I truly enjoyed the complexity of the storyline of The Mothers. The hypocrisy of religion meeting abortion and church optics was a powerful statement. It was all so messy with a perfect mix of controversy to keep the plot driving forward. It made me think as all great books should. #LMPBC @Lesanne @sprainedbrain
@Wife , it's on its way--delivering the 10th. Sorry for the delay!