The Other Black Girl: A Novel

Nope. I struggled to get through this. The suspense kept building and building, and when the twist was revealed I felt like “really?” This was a big swing/miss for me.

Took forever to get to the climax of the book and once we got there the book was over

Very much underwhelmed. Suspense kept building, but by the time the big reveal happened, I was already checked out of the story.

The Other Black Girl attempts to put a thrilling spin on addressing being a black woman in the predominantly white publishing industry, but its approach seemed quite satirical and a little petty to me. The book kind of reminded me of They Cloned Tyrone because of some common themes but I think the execution could have been so much better. The multiple povs were very random, and the main character was kind of whiny. Even though I was able to warm up to her as the book progressed, she still felt disconnected and insecure about her identity in a way that quickly became annoying. Also, it took too long to establish a substantial threat against the main character, and when the events finally began to unfold, it felt like a really bad joke that I couldn't bring myself to be thrilled or excited about. I felt like the ending failed to address too many integral aspects of the plot and left holes in the MCs character arc, which was very frustrating. The Other Black Girl unfortunately did not do it for me. After reading, I couldn't help but ask myself "what was the point?"

A slow burn with a quick peak and lack luster ending. The first 12 chapters were fluff and unnecessary back stories. The concept was interesting but the execution was poor.