genre: young adult historical fiction
The Davenports have done what many families aspire to but very few families actually accomplish: risen up from poverty and made it to the top. Mr. Davenport's success as the owner of a large carriage company in Chicago means that he's on everyone's invitation list and his three children, John, Olivia and Helen, are some of the most eligible partners in town. Along with Olivia's best friend Ruby and their maid Amy-Rose, the halls of their grand home and the streets of Chicago become the backdrop for all the romantic intrigue one can imagine when one is expected to find just the right match. When your heart doesn't line up with your parents' expectations, though, a season can quickly go from exciting to terribly confusing.
I preordered this because the idea of reading about a Black family that is not only wealthy but truly influential in a time and place of migration and change really appealed to me - and in some ways, The Davenports absolutely gave me what I'd wanted. Chicago at the turn of the last century was fast-paced and highly fluid - but still absolutely a space where the color of your skin determined where you were welcomed. Beyond the confines of the racism that seems to permeate everything, the Davenport children lived full lives and had big dreams, especially about love. This is where things got complicated - because there are FOUR active romantic plotlines in this book and as we switch between the four different narrators, sometimes I felt like I was getting too much of the same thing. Everyone was loving someone that complicated things and when I got near the end I realized that not one thing would really be resolved before it was over. So, there is your warning - there will definitely be more :)
The writing was fine with one glaring exception - everyone's body parts were talked about way too much. I wish I could count the number of times the words "chest" or "lips" or "eyes" were written, because after a while it got annoying enough to pull me out of the plot and wish for different ways of talking about how a person can feel. I don't ALWAYS need to know WHERE in a person's body their feelings are. I acknowledge this is a personal gripe and it might not annoy everyone as much as me.
Despite what I didn't love, I am grateful this book is out in the world. I wonder how my own brain might have developed differently if I'd grown up reading romantic young adult novels about Black characters in a historical setting instead of mostly only having access to books about people who look like me.
No comments:
Post a Comment