This book should be required reading. It was so beautifully written. It was hard to read in parts. There was a lot of anguish and hurt throughout these pages. But wow it was fantastic

We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds is a YA contemporary story with painful historic roots. The Anderson family motto is “focus forward,” but Avery and her mother, Zora, learn that always pushing ahead and only looking to the future can leave you mired in the past.

Avery is a driven student with high goals. Her life revolves around AP classes, test prep, and college admissions deadlines. Or it did…until her family abruptly moved south to Bardell, Georgia to care for her grandmother.

Avery doesn’t even know Mama Letty. She only has vague and violent snippets of memory from visiting when she was five-years-old. Naturally, she’s full of questions, which Zora refuses to answer. As family secrets slowly unfold, Avery pushes Zora and Letty to reconcile before time runs out.

We Deserve Monuments is full of unforgettable characters written with emotional depth. And Hammonds has done a beautiful job weaving together the trauma, bitterness, and resentment of the past with new found friendship, acceptance, and love.

If a story’s setting is important to you, this one is a stand-out! Each location carries its own piece of the story - its own theme and emotion - which together form a well-rounded sense of place. Sweetness Lane is family and abandonment, Downtown Bardell is hatred and revenge, the “perfect spot” along the river is carefree friendship, the train station is love, and The Renaissance is pure joy.

We Deserve Monuments is a book everyone should read.

This book was so amazing it made me laugh, cry and feel angry. I didn't know what to expect from this book but it was such an amazing read. The book was beautifully written and it left me feeling all the feeling and raw. A well crafted coming of age story that will make you feel everything under the sun. I loved seeing every perspective through Avery's eyes. Highly recommend.

Powerful, stunning, well crafted. The rich background tensions of Hammonds' novel create a delicious drive towards a compelling and satisfying conclusion. A must-buy.

We Deserve Monuments is an impressive debut novel. I loved and empathized with Avery right from the start, and couldn’t help but fall in love with Simone and Mama Letty as well. This book tackled a lot, and at times felt like it could have been further developed, but it’s a great read regardless. This is one I’ll be recommending and I can’t wait to see what Hammonds writes in the future.

Moving and being the new kid is always hard, even harder when it’s your senior year. Although for Avery, the move might actually be a good thing after her recent breakup. The change of scenery, Bardell, to take care of her terminally ill grandmother whom she hasn’t seen since she was five, is not the easy road at all. There is a main story plot line and a couple of lesser plot lines that eventually make sense together in the end.

This is a must read book-a "mirror" book for some of my students, but more importantly a "window" book for my students to gain some insight into another's experience so different from their own. An excellent story weaved with voices and timelines.

Avery Anderson is 17 years old and being uprooted from her home in DC to small town Georgia to look after her ailing grandmother along with her parents. Avery is very city and looks out of place in this country town and her nose piercing has everyone asking her is shes a lesbian. Avery is a lesbian, but isn’t necessarily ready to be open with the people she’s just met. Avery’s mom left home after graduating, and never looked back, her strained relationship with her mother has caused Avery and her grandmother to have.a nonexistent relationship. When Avery lays eyes on her neighbor Simone Cole she’s immediately smitten. As she watches the interaction between Simones mother and her mother she realizes there’s a tension between them that is odd. As Avery and Grandma Letty spend more time together Grandma Letty begins to break down her walls as she tells stories of the grandfather Avery never knew. Family secrets are soon revealed and everyone’s life is forever changed.

I really enjoyed this YA book. I love the way it explores family dynamics, healing, self love and acceptance. This book was so well written anyone could read it from YA to adults and thoroughly enjoy it.
Thank you @netgalley and @macmillian for this ARC. #YA #teen #YABooks #lgbtqia #blacklgbtqia

A poignant read.

We Deserve Monuments takes us to the South as a girl battles with being herself around her family, navigating school and friendship in a close-minded place, and what it means to love on your own terms. A coming-of-age and identity story told alongside a mystery of generations and family struggles, Hammonds bring to the light what it means to be queer and black in the South in the past and how that impacts the present.

This story is heartbreaking and heart soaring all wrapped in one.

A family filled with dark secrets. Two girls who fall in love, yet have to hide this from the rest of the world. A rich history of systemic racism and privilege still seen in the actions of those in power today. A story that needs to be shared.

Everyone should read this book. Jas Hammonds wrote such a gripping and powerful book that engages the reader in every page.

It was a thought-provoking read. Our teens repetitively check it out. Readers become engrossed in the story from start to end,

New town. Racism. Colorism. Small town.
Ya book with family secrets that impact the new generation.
I loved the storyline. The acceptance of who the main pov is.
The mom. Coming home after leaving and practically escaping the small town. I will say there’s a death and I cried so much.

This is one of my absolute favorites of the year and perhaps one of my favorite YAs ever. I have so much to say yet nothing I say will do this book justice.

Thoughts 💭
This book is exceptionally written. I am an avid YA reader and while this story is accessible in the way YA stories are meant to be, the storytelling/flow of it is so unique and more of what I’d classify as adult contemporary. Parts of it reminded me how Brit Bennett uses the Greek chorus in different parts of The Mothers.

This book hit home for me in so many ways. The heart of this novel is about generational trauma and how the three women, Avery, Avery’s mom, and Avery’s grandma, all reckon with it in different ways. Trauma from being Black in rural Jim Crow era Georgia, being raised by a neglectful but grieving mother as a result, and then being separated from family history for years and feeling disconnected. Trauma that spans and takes new shapes with each woman. Trauma that is not neatly resolved by a single conversation.

Admittedly, because of my own family trauma that is very different from that in novel, I found this difficult to read at first. My knee-jerk reaction was to wonder why Avery would even want a relationship with someone who was hard to love and, in turn, made her feel hard to love. But once I regrouped and parsed through my own shit, I returned & fell even more in love with this book. Everyone needs to be able to heal their trauma differently. For me it is space and distance. For others it’s getting closer to it. It was beautiful to see her work through it in her own way, and, in turn, make me reflect differently on mine.

It’s also deeply queer. The kind of queer that is so enmeshed and woven into the storyline that the identities come as a pair, rather than separate. It’s not a coming out novel, but rather just a coming of age.

Read if you like: Coming of age, pansexual MC, Black families, biracial MC, explorations of grief, stories about being Black & queer in the south, very complex characters

⚠️TWs: Racism, police brutality/KKK, homophobia/lesbophobia, death, murder, cancer, grief, alcoholism, abandonment/neglect, outing

What a stunning, stunning debut. Hammonds expertly weaves together themes of family, love, friendship, and our relationship to the past and future. A total stunner I'll be thinking about for ages.

Hello Again,

I have wanted to read this book ever since I saw the cover image online. I never even read the back of the book but I knew I would want to devour this story, something was just saying this will be a great read. So when I got super duper lucky and the publisher shared a copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions, I couldn’t help but jump in!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Avery has a great life in DC. She lives with her parents, goes to a school she likes, has great friends, makes good grades, and is looking forward to her senior year. But all of that changes kind of suddenly when her family has to temporarily move back to her mother’s home town. Avery’s entire family lives there and she has visited but never spent a ton of time there. This is all changing now, as Avery’s grandmother is dying. Avery is going to be attending school there, living with her grandmother and parent’s in her mother’s old childhood home, and getting to know everyone a bit better. While this is not the senior year Avery envisioned she is going to try to make the most of it and this life experience.

I loved this book more than I could have ever imagined. I found myself caring about and loving every character not just our main character. Avery’s family is wonderful and her new friends are also kind of interesting and fun! I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone (you may be able to pick up a copy on your Libby app)! On a final note, I want to mention this absolutely drop dead gorgeous cover. It’s stunning and is now one of the books that faces out on my shelf.

Goodreads Rating: 5 Stars

****Thank you so much to the publisher for the ARC copy in exchange for my honest opinions.

Thank you to Net Galley and Macmillan for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This books centers around Avery Anderson, a seventeen year old that has recently moved from DC to Georgia to her terminally ill grandmother's home just before her senior year in high school. Her grandmother isn't warm and welcoming and there is past family drama that no one wants to talk about. Of course, it seems like a disaster but she finds friendship with two other girls. There is a racist history in the town and one of the girl's mother was murdered and never solved. Avery wants to know more about these different secrets in the past yet she may damage the many relationships with family and friends. This was a good read about belonging, knowing oneself, and dealing with the history of the past.

I absolutely loved this book and everything about it. This book follows Avery Anderson as she struggles with moving to a new place her senior year to live with her terminally ill grandmother in a tense environment due to family secrets. Luckily she meets Simone, her neighbor, and Jade the daughter or the town’s murder family however as these relationships develop more secrets are unveiled. I really liked this book’s portrayal of generational trauma and that was a common theme in a lot of areas. The complexities of race and sexuality were explored in depth and I felt so seen while reading it. The way this book used events from the past and present to tell the story and develop these issues was fantastic. This book read more like a mystery with there being little pieces from the past and present to create a story and I really enjoyed that style. Overall this was a really complex book with some harder social issues but I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

Oof this was such an important story that illustrates the multi-generational impact of racism, while tying in many aspects of modern life and an adorable romance.

This book was amazing. It is a bit of a slow boil, so it took me awhile to finally get into it, but when I did, I was really there. The intersections of queer identity, race, womanhood, and coming of age were beautiful and powerful to read and the language was rich and lush. This was a truly special read, something not to be missed.