A thought provoking novel. It was deep and multilayered. So much sadness and trauma. A consideration of what makes a good life.

I wanted to love this and ended up only liking it. Our schools are super segregated even today so a book looking into that in novel form is right up my alley. However, that plot doesn't make an appearance until we are already through a third of the book. I get wanting to set up the characters but this almost is too much. The book really tried but I don't think it delivered. I'm not sure if the author isn't familiar enough about the issue and was just trying to write a topical family story but this wasn't it.

I was very much looking forward to this book. I follow BOTM and was ecstatic to see they chose it for one of five of their picks for the month. In this day in age, it is not more important than ever to make racism a thing of the past. To open one's eyes and realize that maybe what they think isn't raciest truly is. However, I got 20% through this book and was so lost. I felt the story line was so busy, that I lost interest very quick just trying to figure out what was what. I feel terrible giving this book a low rating but I just couldn't make sense of this book.

This is a really good book! It would be wonderful for a book group because of so many things to talk about.

Are the characters loveable or even likable? Some are some are not. They all have their flaws.
The story is well written and I wanted to keep reading it!

I think that this book is very timely with the content - race, addiction, wealth (or lack of it), love...you name it, it is there. But, I did feel that the writing was disjointed at times. Many different characters and they don't intersect much throughout.

To be honest it felt a little forced to me, I am sure many others out there will love it. Maybe it is the wrong time for me to read it, that can happen to.

QUICK-ISH TAKE: My husband and I have had this running joke…he’s taken a very pragmatic approach to the pandemic this past year, but I’ve leaned into my worst STATION ELEVEN impulses, refusing to let him leave the house without gloves, mask, face shield, purell…because of course, in the “apocalyptic book” that is our lives, my husband is the heart of our story, that hero character that I’m terrified will succumb to Covid, leaving me, the flawed, damaged (handsome) anti-hero to use his death as a jumping-off point into a rich character journey of growth and personal betterment. Dark!⁣
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Which, first of all, is a sign that it’s time to put down the doomsday books, but also the first thing I thought of while reading WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS, Naima Coster’s gorgeous multigenerational family story (not apocalyptic!) that similarly kills off the heart of the story in chapter one, and the catalyst into an interwoven tapestry of beautifully flawed character stories.⁣
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Told over the course of 30+ years, #WhatsMineAndYours is the story of 2 families: Ray and Jade (a Black couple), who live with their young son on the mainly Black east side of Piedmont, North Carolina; and Lacey May (a white woman), who along with her charming and troubled husband Robbie (Latinx), are raising three half-Latina daughters in a predominantly white neighborhood. When Piedmont decides to consolidate and essentially integrate its school district, the two families are inextricably connected in ways that will reverberate for years to come.⁣
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Reminiscent of ASK AGAIN, YES, THE MOST FUN WE’VE EVER HAD and YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY…WMAY is a complex and thought-provoking story about the sacrifices mothers make to do whatever it takes to support their families. It is also an excellent exploration of cultural and implicit bias, in particular, the character of Lacey May, a mother with a racist grudge against Jade and her family, who is no stranger to adversity herself as she struggles to raise biracial kids. Also worth mentioning the gut-wrenching twist at the end that Coster executes masterfully, tying the story together with an emotionally-impactful ending I did not see coming.

This is a book that beautifully conveys the stories of each of the characters, delving deep into their motivations and feelings as the story continues.. I love that What's Mine and Yours delves into so many different intersecting issues. I also love that it's a multigenerational story. It's a heartrending story. I had never heard of the author until recently, and hope to read her earlier book, Halsey Street, too.

Great characters and the family dynamics in this book are so well-written. I was hooked from the beginning and definitely want to go back and read Halsey Street. The I think the book lost a little bit of steam towards the end, but overall a really great read for those that like family dramas and books dealing with a lot of societal issues.

I have been struggling mentally with how to describe this book fully. This is a story of family, of hardships, of relationships, of race, of addiction, of success and failure. It has a non-linear timeline that I can't say I fully understood the reason for. There are a lot of characters and storylines to track, especially as the story jumps around in time. The story itself is very real and very gritty but also chaotic. The prose itself is well written but I feel like it could have been less choppy. The twist at the end was relatively easy to predict but it did make me go back through my reactions to several of the characters and my evaluation of their emotions and relationships. You won't be bored reading this story, but at times you may be confused.

Enjoyed how the author swung from from time to the other and back. It was interesting how different people who don’t seem to be connected in any way find their lives interspersed later

Well written and thoughtful, but I could not understand why the author chose to center so much of the story on Lacey May, the book's main racist white character, when the stories of characters like Jade and Gee seemed like less well-trod ground.

*I received a copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

What’s Mine and Yours had its moments. The writing was easy to read and the beginning part of the book really hooks you. Once the dual timeline of the kids came in to play I lost interest. It took 40% to get to the synopsis of the story (integration of black and white kids in public schools) and by that time I just wanted to hear all the adults stories growing up and what life was like for them.

I would still recommend this book to other reader and my library. I will also be checking out more by Naima Coster in the future.

I sure do love a multi-generational story and this one is pretty solid.

This book is about two families and how they intertwine through the years, mostly focusing on Gee and Noelle. Gee's father was murdered when he was a child and he and his mother, Jade often butt heads. Noelle's father was put in prison when she was a child so she watched her mother, Lacey May struggle to raise her and her 2 sisters. Later in the book there is a city and county school blending initiative, which pits the mothers against each other.

What's Mine and Yours gave me An American Marriage vibes with a bit of  Ask Again, Yes thrown in.

To keep myself from getting confused, which can be easy when books switch back and forth between years, I made notes on who was married to who and their kids' names. It was definitely helpful and I would suggest that you might do the same, especially if you're like me and tend to read multiple books at the same time. It also seemed like much of the book could have taken place in any old year. I didn't feel a lot of difference between 1996 and 2018.

I really enjoyed how their family history was fleshed out through flashbacks and flashforwards. However, as much as the synopsis on the book flap hypes up the school initiative, I felt like that wasn't ever delved into enough. If anything this wasn't the event that tied the families together as much as Ray's murder did in the very first chapter.  

There was part of the ending I didn't see coming and I feel like SUCH a dum dum for not seeing it. I enjoyed the ending very much and felt super nostalgic for these characters that I had grown to love.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the opportunity to review this one.

Told from multiple POV's and different timelines.
School de-segregation brings two families together. The storyline was a bit confusing but I listened via the audiobook and read the e-book; this helped to make the story come alive for me.
Grief is a central theme.
Discussed on episode 126 of the Book Cougars podcast.
www.bookcougars.com

THIS WAS BRILLIANT. FULL STOP. I loved the richness of the characters. also it's about so many themes, like addiction, sisterhood, bonds between mothers and their children, beyond school integration, though ALSO importantly about that. I loved it. I think Noelle was my favorite character but Naima Coster makes it hard to choose. She is a gift.

There was so much going on in this book. The writing style was absolutely beautiful, but I think some of the decisions - like going back and forth in time, and trying to have somewhat of a surprise twist - took away from the beauty of the writing and the messages that the story was getting across. I wish the back-and-forth had been simpler - choose two or three time periods, for example - because I think that would have made the story more impactful. It was still incredibly powerful, and I enjoyed it very much, I just think all the back and forth muddled it a bit. I also felt that the "surprise" was very easy to see coming and I felt annoyed like the book was teasing that twist just to have a hook - but it didn't need it! The story would have been powerful enough without that. This was also very heavy and bleak subject matter - racism, addiction, death, divorce - so the reader should be aware and in the right headspace going in.

This was a thoroughly engrossing novel with a large cast of diverse characters. I like Coster's style which is spare but paints a picture (or a character) with some key details and actions. These stories were interesting and will stay with me for a long time. There is a realism in the relationships - the give and take, the fragility of people's identities, the way we relate to one another - that I appreciated. It is also quite impressive how Coster takes us back and forth in time and from one character's story to another and yet it doesn't feel disconnected. Each piece is a part of this family and this story. I also liked the way that race was handled. It is not blatant but often unspoken or shown through a gesture or action - just as it is in our world. Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This character-driven, multi-generational story featuring two families who become intertwined through a school integration process begins a bit like interconnected short stories before evolving into a more traditional multiple POV / multiple timeline story. The writing is gorgeous and Coster commentates on race, class, prejudice, and gentrification through the lenses of a cast of characters I was invested in. Though I was more or less enjoying it through the first half, there wasn't anything pulling me back in each time I put it down. But, this changed as the story went on and I loved how she connected the dots at the end. A good pick for fans of An American Marriage and Ask Again, Yes.

Coming-of-age story that weaves race and relationships into a complex tale. Great for patrons that enjoy multi-family sagas!

In Piedmont, North Carolina, in the 1990s, two women are faced with raising young children on their own. Jade and her son Gee are Black while Lacey May and her three daughters are White. Both are living on the same edge of desperation, but in What’s Mine and Yours each responds to her circumstances in very different ways. Ways that come to clash a decade later, when despite it being 2002, school integration is still a divisive issue in the South.

There are three timelines in What’s Mine and Yours. In the earliest Jade and Gee suffer a tremendous loss when Ray, Jade’s boyfriend and the only father Gee knows, is killed in an altercation. This is deeply unfortunate for the novel as well, because within the single chapter he inhabits, Ray is one of the strongest characters in the book. Which may be why he was killed—even as a reader I felt his loss and knew the impact it would have. Still, not a choice I liked.

In the same period, Lacey May and her daughters are living without the basic necessities while Robbie, her husband and the girls’ father is in prison. Unable to find work, Lacey May agrees to move in with a kindly, but hapless man who loves her and is willing to accept whatever crumbs of affection she shows him. This transactional union on her part continues through the novel as Lacey never divorces Robbie or cuts ties with him. He’s an addict and despite his love, his poor choices impact the family throughout What’s Mine and Yours.

In the present day, Noelle, Lacey’s oldest daughter, is contemplating the state of her marriage. Her husband, a photographer, is in France on a project, but the distance between them is becoming more than just miles. Margarita, the middle daughter, is in L.A. pretending to be a star, but with no real success, while Diane, the youngest is still in North Carolina and the only one of the three who has any contact with their mother.

The present and the past converge in 2002 when the local high school arrives at a plan to bus in predominantly Black students from the opposite side of town to increase diversity and opportunity for the county as a whole. Lacey May and Jade stand on opposite sides of the issue—with Lacey asserting her conviction that her daughters deserved to be in the school and their opportunities would be diminished due to the influx of new students. Noelle and Gee manage to forge a much-needed friendship for both, but are ultimately caught in the crossfire.

In creating Lacey May, author Naima Coster writes a character sure to evoke a response. For me, it was antipathy, as this woman who had done nothing more than dupe the right man into supporting her, asserts her rights to benefits she wants to deny others. Others like Jade, who has put herself through school, working multiple jobs, to earn a degree in the medical field. All great novels need a counterpoint character, but Lacey, with her entitled hypocrisy, rang so true to much of the racism going on in America today, that I tuned her out.

Oddly, despite my reaction to Lacey, the rest of the novel left me indifferent. Whatever pull was needed to exert itself and hook me never materialized. Instead, I skated on the novel’s surface and quickly forgot it after I finished. What’s Mine and Yours is a good book, but great books stay with me and make me think and it missed the mark.