Sittings with a Gyasi book is less reading than it is witnessing. It is a seemless step into her world, her words, and I wish I could sit with them and not stand up again until I'm finished, and simultaneously wish it wouldn't end. Transcendent Kingdom, as Homegoing, was both startling and quiet in it's brilliance. I really cannot say enough good things about this author and her work. Read Gyasi for the way she makes writing seem effortless, for the way the past and present are in constant conversation, for the references you'll miss and the ones she'll explain to you later. Read Gyasi when you feel like sitting outside on a warm day and meditating in the shade of a large tree. For the spiritual and the scientific, for the relationships between those things we find incongruous. Read Gyasi.

Absolutely brilliant. Just as strong as her debut although totally different. I can't wait to see what Yaa Gyasi does next.

These characters reached off the page and squeezed my heart SO HARD. I absolutely loved this book. I don't often mention an author's previous books in my reviews, but Homegoing was such a debut hit, it's hard to read this book without that story and its success in mind. That said, Transcendent Kingdom is so completely different from Homegoing and also even better, IMHO. I cannot wait to see what Gyasi writes next. She is certainly a literary force.

While I vastly preferred the author's first novel, Homegoing, Transcendent Kingdom is, I must admit, very well written. Yaa Gyasi has a gift clearly, even if I found this particular book (with it's often dark emphasis on faith, science, religion, & love) to be exhausting, rather than uplifting. While my personal rating for this book is low, I'm still strongly recommending it to others and including it for consideration in Library Reads. It's not for me, but I think it is for a LOT of other folks

Beautiful beautiful beautiful book. My favorite of 2020 so far. I will absolutely be recommending this to everyone and encouraging our fiction purchaser to buy this book.

I was not as impressed with this novel as I was the first. However I think there are a lot of topics in things that would be great for discussion-based reading in this story. The material is easy to read and easy to digest, but outside of the actual experiences of the main character I found this book lacking in complexity. Overall I think that this would be a great young adults green in dealing with things such as drug abuse, depression, immigrant families, and sexuality.

This is a beautiful follow up to Gyasi's first book. I loved the characters and story and will be purchasing it for my library!

A wonderful sophomore entry from Yaa Gyasi. Absolutely loved this book about a complicated family relationship. Well worth the (short) wait

I read and loved Homegoing, and yet I was still unprepared for the emotional impact of reading this book. There's something here to touch the feelings of just about everyone, with themes ranging from addiction, mental health, family, immigration, and the complexity of relationships...This book is going to mean a great deal to a whole lot of people. Wonderfully written and thoroughly engaging. I couldn't put it down!

At times the writing really drew me in and I enjoyed the spirituality component of the book. However, I did not enjoy this nearly as much as the authors first book, Homegoing. I just didn’t feel as if the story was connected all the way through...at the end I was left thinking that I didn’t quite “get’ everything the author was trying to convey.

Whew. This was a lot. There is SO MUCH packed into this book. So many storylines, so many thoughts. I didn't dislike it (though I disliked the ending quite a bit), but I don't think it's as immediately accessible as Homegoing was, and I say that for one reason, and it's that the philosophical stuff on faith and god and science is QUITE intense. Everything else--the brother stuff, the mom stuff, the immigrant stuff, the dad stuff, even the relationship/friendship stuff--is something I'd have no problem pushing into peoples' hands. It's all good. But it takes about 50% of the book to actually break that stuff open, and it's an extremely, extremely slow start before that.

I don't want to give the impression that I struggled to get through this, because I absolutely did not. But sometimes the science/faith stuff made my eyes want to wander, and it just...wasn't for me. There's an audience for this, but tbh, it's not the same audience that loved Homegoing.

Thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for the digital ARC.