It was just ok for me. I think it might make a good book club discussion though.. What would you do if you could pretend to be someone else?

A compelling story that keeps you mesmerized until the end. Very timely with our current race relations. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

A great, thought-provoking read. I've always found 'passing' a fascinating aspect of racial identity. I'm familiar with other books that explore passing, but using siblings (twins, specifically) made the story unique and it presented a lot of situations that prompted me to do some self-reflection regarding privilege and my own experiences.

I can't stop thinking about this book. I realized in the final pages just how much the narrative shifts voices within chapters and shifts eras, but I never once felt defeated by it. The structure felt like natural thought, like when you remember something from childhood, which led you to think about school, which led you to think about a classmate, and so on. I think this works because the reader gets to spend many, many pages dedicated to each character, getting to know them.

Attached is a talk with Brit Bennett and Glory Edim from The Strand that I got to emcee (virtually). Enjoy!

This is a thought provoking book about race, sexual identity, acceptance in world that can be cruel if you don’t fit the norm. Unfortunately, I could not identify with the characters and I started skimming. I feel the book is well written but just not a good fit for me. 3.5 stars Not posting to Goodreads since I did not finish the book.

What a beautifully written and timely piece of fiction about motherhood and sisterhood, colorism, gender constructs, and societal norms. Gorgeous writing and intensely thought provoking.

This was such a unique story. I loved the characters and how the story unfolded. I wish our library book club was meeting during the pandemic because this story is rich for discussion.

This was amazing. The two story lines were impossible to put down and kept me interested to see how they intersected. Having the second generation meet and the diversity of characters was an added authentic element.

This was so beautiful written. I couldn't put it down. I loved the relationships between the sisters and daughters. I understood everyone's decisions, despite how heartbreaking. I really cared about everyone and their journey. It was sad but also beautiful. Such a wonderful book.

Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3323730635

I do not know how to review this book! What I do know is I loved how it made me feel while reading it.

The Vanishing Half felt big and sprawling, with so many complex and beautiful characters across different time periods and places. I've just finished and it's going to take me a long to process. The book is about escape, and return, and escape, and return, and looking at yourself, and refusing to look at yourself, and then seeing yourself again. Accepting that someone you love is alive but lost but there, too.

Ooof, this book got me in my heart and my gut. The whole time I read it I could see it cinematically. Brit Bennett is a fucking storyteller. Masterful. You can sense her wisdom all over this work. She creates complete, real worlds and human beings... I just floated through her writing in awe and pain and joy. The stories were told with such love and care and compassion... I mean, my heart HURTS thinking about these characters. Do not get me started.

Whatever Brit Bennett was paid for this book isn't enough, doesn't matter what the number is. And I will read literally ANYTHING she writes in the future. I cannot wait to see what she gifts us next. I will give myself over to Brit Bennett and she can take me wherever she wants to go! Brit Bennett deserves all the love she's getting for the Vanishing Half.

Don't miss this one, people.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Penguin Group - Riverhead for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'll admit it: I came to this book with great skepticism. I am not a huge fan of multi-generational family stories (to put it mildly) but I had heard so many good things about this book already that I couldn't help but give it a try. And I'm really, really glad I did because this book is amazing. Not only is it incredibly engaging, but it manages to say so much in such a deft way that you never feel bogged down or overwhelmed while reading. Because, honestly, there is a lot to dissect here, and yet the way Bennett writes it never feels like she overstuffed the book; rather it reads quickly, propelling you along to the next scene, the next chapter.

If I have any complaints it's my standard one for this type of book: which is that I think that some of the characters/time periods deserved a bit more air time than they got. There were also some transitions between scenes/time period that felt a bit wonky to me, and the ending was not quite as strong as I would've liked. (One element in particular, regarding the twins' mother felt super pat to me, although not as much as it could have in a lesser writer's hands.)

But all these things aside I found this to be a very enjoyable read, and well deserving of its hype. I would recommend this to anyone, even those who are normally leery of family saga type books.

So beautifully written! Weaves seamlessly through time and perspective, telling a complicated story of sisters and mothers and daughters and race. Will be recommending this one a lot!!

Thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for an advanced copy of this book!

Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy of the this book. I love books with deep character developed and The Vanishing Half did not disappoint. Not just about twin sisters who separate as young adults, The Vanishing Half has a cast of characters that are all trying to figure out who they are. The racial themes are presented in ways I've never read before. I started reading this at 10 pm and closed finished at 3 am. I couldn't put it down.

This was an interesting and thought-provoking book. I had some expectations, partly based on incomplete information...I had seen remarks comparing it to Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, so I thought it might be a real challenge for me (since I’ve been in less than perfect health and under treatment, I feel like my brain doesn’t work as well so complexity is hard for me). But just a glance at the reviews on Amazon showing stars in the 5 range made me eager to get reading, so I jumped right on it when Penguin/Riverhead and NetGalley provided a copy in exchange for my honest review.

The book is about identical twin girls who run away from home at age 16, and follows their lives from the 1950s to the 1990s. They are “the Vignes twins,” Desiree and Stella, who grew up in Mallard, a town described as a place “...for men like him, who would never be accepted as whie but refused to be treated like Negroes.” The town was populated by light-skinned African-Americans and has been very hard on their family. Their father “had been so light...but none of that mattered when the white men came for him.” After their mother tells them they have to leave school and go to work to help support the family, they leave, going first to New Orleans, until Stella disappeared. Desiree goes off, marries a VERY dark man and has a very dark daughter named Jude who she brings with her when she comes back home to escape an abusive marriage. Stella, in the meantime, passes for white and goes off to live in California, where she too has a daughter, who is something of a classic spoiled LA brat.

The story is told in chapters that focus on Desiree, Stella, Jude, and the spoiled one whose name I can’t remember, with lots of detail about their families, their communities, and their racial identities. I loved all that, and was fine until (as the publisher’s blurb asks, “What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?” It’s that intersecting storyline thing that derailed it for me. I’m not sure how it might have gone otherwise, and I didn’t expect the level of involvement that happened between the daughters. I think I was just too entranced with Stella and Desiree, and didn’t really care enough about the daughters...but in any case, I think it will be a good pick for book clubs, as it explores so much in terms of family, trust/honesty, gender/sexuality, and race relations. Maybe too many topics in the second generation? Her writing is terrific, but for me there were just too many issues and convenient intersections between the twins’ two daughters. Three stars.

NetGalley ARC | One of the most thought-provoking and talked about titles of the summer, don't miss The Vanishing Half with poignant commentary about racism, race, and families.

I love historical southern fiction (and they head to CA and NYC), and Brit Bennett does not disappoint.

You can find my complete review on The Uncorked Librarian: https://www.theuncorkedlibrarian.com/currently-reading-august-2020/

Thank you so much to the author and publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

There's a small town in Louisiana, settled by blacks, whose descendents have carried on the tradition of essentially trying to breed themselves into light skin. Some hundred years after the founding of the town, twin girls are born, who are inspeparable at birth, but after running away to find a better life, they realize that they are not so inspeparable as everyone thought. In fact, they can separate so far from each other that one can choose to live as a white woman, while the other returns home.

The question of whether the sisters reunite, and whether Stella, who passes, ever reveals the truth about her background to her husband and daughter pulls the reader through the novel. Stella and Desirée, her twin, and their daughters, one raised in the Jim Crow south, and the other in a life of privilege in Los Angeles, are characters that will not soon be forgotton. Not everyone will love this book (although there's a lot to love), but everyone will come away from it asking questions about race and identity and how the two intersect.

I really loved this book. Powerfully written with a compelling story, it made me question if such a place existed. The bond between the twin sisters was beautifully portrayed and all the characters were complex with individualized stories. I loved them all, flaws and strengths.

Brit Bennett's sophomore novel is beautifully written and provides another interesting perspective into the lives of people different from myself. The themes of identity were fascinating, and I really enjoyed viewing Stella's and Desiree's paths and how their decisions affected their daughters' lives, and then how those daughters forged their own paths. Definitely recommend, and the audio was impeccably produced.

I received this as an early review copy from NetGalley and Riverhead Books. All opinions are my own.

Would you give up everything for freedom and safety, even if that means leaving your family forever? If you had the chance to heal your family, would you?

Vanishing Half is a brilliant novel that shows how two generations’ lived experiences and choices can affect multiple people for decades.

When you’re a societal “other” you survive by wearing masks. Sometimes that mask is your chosen identity, but it’s also what others ascribe to you. Sociologists call this coding. For example, our character Stella is Black but so light-skinned that sometimes other characters mistake her for White when she’s in town. They’re coding her as White. This is why racial/ethnic identity is so nuanced. Part of it is your upbringing, the culture that you absorbed but a formative part of racial/ethnic identity has to do with what others perceive your race/ethnicity to be.

Brit Bennett expertly shows the readers how coding functions in America. In her debut novel, Bennett is able to explore the tenuous and ridiculous racial structure white supremacy created. To be clear, Bennett is not making white supremacy or race a joke in her novel. However, there is some underlying satire here. It’s funny that a marginalized person can pull the wool over their oppressor’s eyes, showing them that their made-up hierarchies are unfounded.


The cherry on top? White people don’t even know what Black people look like. When Stella is passing in public the only person who can clock her are other Black people. It’s like my dad says, “a Filipino can spot another Filipino.” Blood recognizes blood.

Vanishing Half explores performance: racial, on the stage, gender, playing people’s expectations, etc. To a certain degree, each character is performing. Regardless of the type of performance, the characters’ identities become entangled with their act. This theme is brilliant and woven throughout the novel with such care.

Here are my gripes. The opening of the novel was slow. It was hard to get into. The narrative felt so distant when it opened with the twins. We are introduced to these characters as a set without individual thoughts or desires. They even escaped their small town, Mallard, together. Everything they did was in synch, except the fact that Desiree would pretend to be Stella, but Stella would never pretend to be her sister. Slowly, the reader learns that Stella has run away from even her twin. The reader follows Desiree as she goes back home after a tumultuous marriage, still keeping an eye out for her sister.

My expectation was that we would follow the sisters more and even get the perspective of the twin’s parents. Again, the narrative was distant in the opening chapters to withhold information from the readers. It was authorial deception that I resented because I was so curious about the twin’s parents.

But then Jude is born. That’s when the narrative becomes intimate.

This story is about the twins and the emotional/psychological damage that occurs after racial violence, yes. But this story is more so about Jude. The story blossoms when this character is introduced. Jude is the connective tissue in her family. She deeply knows her mother and Maman. After disappearing for decades, she stumbles upon her aunt Stella and befriends her daughter. She’s the unlikely hero of the novel. The densest chunks of the novel is devoted to Jude. After all, there would be no plot if she hadn’t chosen to go to school in L.A. Her actions and choices affect her entire family in major and minute ways. She is the narrative’s healer, literally and metaphorically.

Arguably, Jude’s foil is not her cousin the whitest white girl you’ve ever met. Jude’s foil is her aunt: Stella. Stella decides to rip her family apart. Stella decides to lie and perform for survival. Stella chooses a partner on top of the social hierarchy for her own protection—despite never feeling safe. She is the blade that splits apart from her family because she cannot endure the strife and needless pain that is projected onto them because of who their ancestors are.

This book needs to be read. It has so much to say and it deserves to be heard.

This book was brilliant. Bennett's writing is one that will get better with each book. The story of two twin sisters, who are Black, light-skinned living in a small town, one going off to pass as white and the other always wondering where her sister is.

It's a book about decisions that will affect your life forever, colorism, privilege, and so much more.