The Mothers by Brit Bennett book review

 

The Mothers by Brit Bennett book review 

The Mothers by Brit Bennett This is a book that I meant to review in November because I read this back in October. But I'm finally getting around to it and I wanted to make sure that i did a review of this book because I really enjoyed it. And I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about it because it's not a perfect book but it was a book that completely enraptured by attention. 

So in the beginning of this book you are following this young girl in Nadia. She's around 17 years old at the beginning of the story. Her mother has recently died and so she is just going through the grieving process. She starts frequenting this local, I believe it's a diner or a coffee shop, something along those lines. While she's there she ends up getting the attention of one of the servers there who ends up being the local pastor's son. 

They start sort of this secret relationship and then one day it turns out that Nadia's pregnant. So they have to decide what they're going to do and then deal with the aftermath of all of that. 

That is sort of like the most bare-bones version of the synopsis that I could give you but there's so much more that's happening in the story. You also see Nadia's father for a bit, seeing how he's dealing with his wife's death and how he's grieving in and of himself. 

He starts going to the local church and volunteering his time and attending services. The locals pastor's son is this 21 year old football star who recently underwent this major injury that sort of slighted his football career. 

You also get to see Nadia become friends with this girl named Aubrey who attends the church who's very innocent and chaste. And you eventually follow them through their adulthood and you get to see the choices that they make it their lives and the paths that they go down and seeing how their lives sort of grow and change and evolve as they grow up here in Southern California. One of the reasons why I really enjoyed this book is because the church plays a predominant role in the storyline. 

I feel like church or religion in general is very rare in literature and when it is there, it's sort of either belittled or it just isn't explored really. But church culture is wrapped up in everything happening in these characters lives. And it isn't like just happening in the South sort of thing. 

Like I feel like whenever I see churches mentioned in this South or books that take place in the South but this is taking place in Southern California and it very much is about that specific type of church culture.

And I think I could also just relate to that church culture a lot because it reminded me a lot of the church that I grew up in. 

The title here The Mothers is referring to this group of like older women who belong in the church whose sort of gather together at least once a week to pray for the members of the congregation and pray for their pastor. 

And they're also sort of like gossip-y a little bit and they always know sort of what's going on in everyone's life at the church. And so they are very much aware of just the situations that are happening with the congregation including Nadia to a certain extent. 

There's like a level of familiarity that this book had for me that I hadn't really experienced in other books. I feel like this aspect of church culture is something that I've never really seen explored quite so well and quite so accurately. 

But even just beyond that, I feel like it's just a really great coming-of-age novel. You see all these different characters who are growing up and have very specific ideas about what their lives are going to be. 

And then you see where their lives actually go and the choices that they are forced to make or not necessarily forced to make, but the choices that they make in their lives and how that sort of ripples out and affects the other people within the community. You see people growing up and changing or people growing up and wanting to change, but staying the same. 

Or you see how these characters, they might like go off on their own paths, but then when they return to each other they seem to just fall back into their old habits, which all of that just felt so real to me. Every single character in this book is extremely flawed but I found them to be completely captivating. 

I wanted to know where their lives were going to lead and if these friendships and relationships were going to hold up to the test of time. 

This book is an extremely long but I ended up reading this within a weekend, like two sittings. I kept thinking about this book, I kept thinking about the characters in this book while I was away from it, which I feel like is just the epitome of a great novel. 

This isn't a perfect novel. The ending gets a little bit too easy or it wraps up a little bit too nicely in my opinion. But I still really, really enjoyed it and the way that it ended didn't really negate the rest of the book for me, but that's just my personal opinion. 

So in the end I gave this book up four out of five stars. I really enjoyed it. I feel like Brit Bennett just really perfectly captures this type of small church, African American church, black Southern culture that isn't really, at least in my opinion seen a lot in literature, and I really, really appreciate it for that. So yeah, those are my quick thoughts on The Mothers by Brit Bennett. 

If you've read this book, definitely leave a comment down below. I know it's very sort of like divisive among people because of the way that the story wraps up and the way that the characters develop, I know some people really didn't like it.

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 THANK YOU SO MUCH