Hi friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all doing well. Today I’m posting my review of Brit Bennett’s novel, The Vanishing Half.

The Vanishing Half by: Brit Bennett: Twins, inseparable for a time, until one vanishes into thin air. In a small town in New Orleans, where being dark skinned is frowned upon Desiree and Stella, two light-skinned girls live. When they run away to the city, and to get a job, Stella pretends to be white, only her pretend starts to become her reality and before she knows it, she leaves the life she knew behind. Meanwhile, Desiree spends a lifetime looking for her, marrying a dark-skinned man who hurts her, but never gives up hope on finding Stella. This novel was really intriguing and the reader enjoyed following these characters around to see what would happen next. This started off slow, but as soon as both sister’s daughters were introduced, did the story get really interesting. They truly brought the story to life and sparked the fire for major plot points, but after all that work up, this reader felt the ending was super flat. This felt like it just ended, like after everything that happened, was almost for nothing. A few things came out of it, and characters did go through a change, but it felt so underwhelming. One thing it did feel was authentic to real life because reality can usually be disappointing, so this reader will give it that. This was easy to follow, despite the time jumps and sometimes within a chapter we’d get multiple point of views without knowing it would change, but somehow it flowed pretty well. The plot was engaging and entertaining, and had thought provoking moments, especially when it came to themes. The content was good because it touched on an important topic that doesn’t get talked about a lot, or one that people might not even know is a thing. This brought to light racism that happens within the black community between light and dark-skinned people. It was fascinating to watch this unfold and how it truly affected all of these characters in some way or another, even spanning generations. For that, this book was really well done, but the ending really didn’t do it for this reader. Overall though, despite the ending this was a good novel, with an absorbing story and brilliant characters.