Emotional and well written

filled star filled star filled star filled star star unfilled
mishale1 Avatar

By

Minah lives in NYC with her father. Minah is 16 and they moved several years back when things got bad with Minah’s mom. Her mom struggled with addiction. Minah hasn’t talked to her mom in years and has lost contact with her mom’s side of the family. The only one she still talks to his her “play cousin” (I’ve never heard this term but I love it, it’s someone you see like family but you’re not actually related to). Minah gets an invitation to her family reunion, the invite contains a heartbreaking surprise: it is in memory of Minah’s mom. Minah didn’t know her mom had died. She is furious and she confronts her dad. He admits that he didn’t know how to tell her when every mention of her mother only made Minah mad.
So Minah has to grapple with the fact that her mother has been gone for six months and nobody told her. She might also feel a bit conflicted about cutting contact with her mom’s family.
Her dad encourages her to go back for the family reunion if she feels like it would be good for her to do, and she decides to go.
I don’t want to give anything away by digging too much into the story about when Minah goes back for the reunion. I will say that she has to deal with her family, what they choose to tell her, what is the truth and how she feels about her relationship with her mother.
This book was super short but it was emotional and powerful. It will definitely bring a tear to your eye and get you choked up.
If I were to offer constructive criticism I felt like the epilogue was not totally necessary.
I also wanted to say that I liked the format of this book. I’m not going to spoil that either :)
I found this book because I read an excerpt on BookishFirst. Thankfully I think won an early copy of the book from BookishFirst because I was totally pulled into the story after reading the excerpt.
I’d definitely recommend this book. It’s not something I would have found on my own and I’m glad I read the excerpt and got pulled into the story.