Ratings7
Average rating3.2
'What's Mine and Yours is a book about parents who try and fail and then try again. An extraordinary cast of characters, nuanced and full of insight. Read this book.' -ANGIE CRUZ, author of Dominicana In the Piedmont of North Carolina, two families' paths become unexpectedly intertwined over twenty years. Jade and Lacey May are two mothers determined to give their children the opportunities they never had. After a harrowing loss, Jade wants to hand down the tools her son, Gee, will need to survive in America as a sensitive young Black man. Meanwhile, Lacey May, having left the husband she loves, strives to protect her three half-Latina daughters from their charming father's influence. When a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into a predominantly white high school on the west, each mother stands on different sides of the integration debate. Gee meets Lacey May's daughter Noelle during the school play, and their families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers make choices that will haunt them for decades to come. What's Mine and Yours is an expansive yet intimate multigenerational tapestry of motherhood, identity, and the legacies we inherit. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.
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Read this last month, so my review will suffer from my currently hamster-like memory for books. But I liked it! Enough that I brought it along to a reunion with grad school friends to pass it along to one of them. This is a family drama, but I mean that in an expansive way. Coster's characters are fully imagined: they have strengths to admire and weaknesses that made me cringe in sympathy and recognition. The ties that bind and support are also the ones that constrain, portrayed against the complicated backdrop of racism in the American South.
I was left with quite a few unanswered questions. The character development of Lacey May and the sisters was lacking. What was the purpose of the sisters, the story would have flowed without them included. Why did Gee turn out to be the way he is, as an adult? The reasons given didn't add up. What the heck happened to the father?
This novel could have been a 4-5 stars, if the characters were developed, more.