Review of Kalayla

[alyssajanel13]

[i][Following is a volunteer review of "Kalayla" by Jeannie Nicholas.][/i]

[rwc=id411917-125]3 out of 4 stars.[/rwc]Sometime there are girls that you meet in books, and can’t help but instantly fall in love. Kalayla is one of those girls. This charming book, of the titular girl [i]Kalayla[/i] by Jeannie Nicholas, is a lovely book about the heartbreak of entering teenage years and finding our place in this challenging world.



And wow, is Kalayla in a world of challenges. We meet her as a young, biracial girl, running amuck in the streets of Cambridge, bounding from trouble to trouble in oversized clothes and curls tucked under a hat. But try as she might, Lena still sees her. A grandmother figure and neighborhood authority figure in her 70’s, Lena is drawn to this forever-moving young girl. Only a woman with her own pain knows that some girls are always moving because they are running from something. Kalayla’s mother Maureen, is hardly found in the young girl’s life, as she’s running herself ragged as a widow, trying to keep the pieces together. It could be that all these ladies see bits of themselves in each other, still feeling the pricks of the pains of their past. The work day by day and labor by labor to give to each other a goodness they couldn’t have themselves.



One of my favorite aspects of the book was Ms. Nicholas’ choice to tell the story through the three generations of women, while maintaining a first-person narration from all of them. The new speaker is clearly delineated at the start of each chapter to keep the perspectives straight. It’s a powerful writing choice and Nicholas uses it to great advantage. The reader is pulled fully into the mind of each woman and it’s fully compelling. Another draw is Kalayla and Lena. These ladies are superstars, Their energy and passion for their choices are big and loud and sometimes at odds with each other. But they are women with moxie and wonderfully crafted characters.



This is a book for readers who love family stories. Not the ones given us at birth, but the ones we find and create. Fans of coming of age stories will have so much to enjoy here. The language and slightly more mature content make it just out of range for young adult readers, but it’s made for those who love cheering for a girl as they find their way to womanhood. And most importantly, it’s an important book for representation. A heroic girl with darker skin than her mother and no father or other family to accept her, is an important tale for young girls to read so that they can see themselves.



The only drawback in the book for me was the skating between childhood simplicity and then a jump to adult language and sexual content. A few tweaks would have opened the prospective up so much. But, not much to fault, as kids are becoming more adult earlier and earlier every day. It's not always pretty and there are bits scenes of lies and tragedy, and that can he hard to swallow. But it's real.



[i]Kalayla[/i] was executed beautifully, with masterful changing between characters as they took their turns narrating their own stories. The editing was crisp and precise and the manuscript was presented perfectly. I thought it was a great story and it’s a [b]3 out of 4 star[/b] read. I would happily come back for any story Jeannie Nicholas has to tell.

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[i]Kalayla [/i]
View: [url=http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/shelves/book.php?id=411917]on Bookshelves[/url] | [amazon=B07SN1T252]on Amazon[/amazon]