Hi everyone. I'm Rincey and this is Rincey Reads.
Today I'm going to be doing a book review on
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.
So definitely let me know down below
which sort of end of the camp you ended
up falling on. So yeah, that's all I have
for now and thanks for watching.
