Book Review - Here comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn ⭐⭐⭐

I am glad that after hearing several reviews about this book and author that I finally got my hands on a copy of this book to read.

I love reading stories from Caribbean authors and this book has to be one of the best I have read lately. The story is about a young woman Margot who will stop at nothing to help her sister Thandi escape the hardship of life in the ghetto in Jamaica. Margot's mother Delores also shares hope that Thandi, who wants to be an artist would become a doctor and help the family elevate. Margot sacrifices a lot to achieve success for herself and to help her sister but of course there are costs to everything.

I think that what makes this story so relatable to me is that some of the issues are indeed what happens in families that are experiencing hardships. It highlighted some social issues such as the treatment of the LBGTQ community in Jamaica, sexual tourism, rape, crime and I actually love it when a work of fiction really takes us down a realistic path such as this book did.

It was a well written story though I think the ending for me left too many gaps. All in all this was a great read. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26530351-here-comes-the-sun

Book Review _ Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo NO SPOILERS ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

I needed a few days to get over this book. This is a no spoiler review.

I read this as an e book and now I am going to the bookstore to get a physical copy of this book to add to my shelf. Yes it was that good. The writing in the book caught me by surprise because of the layout first. there was literally no punctuation marks so entire chapters felt as one sentence. In my opinion this was brilliant because it really kept me reading wanting to get to the very end. 

The story began with this woman named Amma who apart from being a radical feminist and part of the LBGTQ community she was a black woman, owner of a theatre living in Britain. She was getting ready to host her biggest theatre production yet, and through the guests at the play we see lives of other women coming together. I think everyone should read this book. It exceeded my expectations and it was well deserving of the Man Booker Prize of 2019. I plan to read more from this author.

Caribbean TBR

 It has been a while that I have read a Caribbean book....

Just last week I downloaded two e books that I have wanted to read for a while and these are:

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn

The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon (wanted to read this for years and I finally have it)…

I have heard great things about these books. Be sure to look out for my reviews.

Have you ever had books forever on your shelf??

 

This year because of the Coronavirus I have been working at home since March teaching online. 

Being at home all the time has been restful and some days downright boring. I have been a book lover since my childhood. I have been fascinated with libraries and buying books. Every spare money I have goes into buying books. So for a number of years I have been amassing quite the book collection. Now I'm sort of in a dilemma because I do not know if everyone is like me but I tend to always read the latest book I acquire. So now I have shelves of books that I have not read. 

This year I set my goodreads challenge at 50 books and I am trying to get through some books that have just been pushed to the back of my shelf somehow. Today I am planning to start the second book in the Song of Fire and Ice Series by George R.R. Martin "A Clash of Kings" this has been on my shelf since 2015. I finally read the first books Game of Thrones and I absolutely loved it. I know I have some excellent books on my shelf so for this last part of 2020 maybe I will get through most of them. We will see how it goes.

Happy Reading....