Review of Kalayla

[Anshika Sharma 1]

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

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3 out of 4 stars

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Kalayla by Jeannie Nicholas is a book about an 11-year-old girl named Kalayla and three generations of women.

Kalayla is a self-sufficient loner, who has grown not to need anyone's help. She is a bit of a brat and quite sharp-tongued, unlike her very sensitive mother, Maureen who married a black man and got abandoned by her racist parents because they did not want her to marry a black man. Then Kalayla met Lena, the 71-year-old landlady, who lived on the fourth floor of the apartment without an elevator, which Kalayla found very weird and dumb. Kalayla is an intelligent, young, self-dependent girl who is very blunt and just blurts out whatever is on her mind when she wants. She is quite rebellious, her mother is always busy at work and cannot give her daughter enough of her time, which causes Kalayla to be bored and without the supervision of a guardian. She roams the streets most of the time all alone which the landlady is bothered about a lot because it reminds her of her dark past and to keep Kalayla off the streets, the landlady decides to keep Kalayla busy by giving her small tasks to do so, that she would not get into any trouble.

The novel is wonderful and interesting, there is a lot of history that is included about the landlady in this novel which made me feel all the bad and sad emotions.

I like kalayla's personality since she is smart, a little thoughtful, mentally strong, and business-oriented, but she can be quite insensitive and sharp-tongued at times which I disliked but well how much more can you expect from an 11-year-old. I loved all the characters in this novel.

Furthermore, I became fascinated with Kalayla and Lena in this story. Not only that, but I loved how the author wrote this story, her writing style is perfect and very descriptive. Everybody can read this book. To be honest, it's very intriguing. There was barely anything that I disliked about this book.

There were a few grammatical errors in this book, though it did not impede my reading. I really enjoyed reading this novel. The thing I liked the most about this book is how the author gave a strong message against racism and how Jamal, Maureen and Kalayla became prey to it all the time, it was extremely upsetting and sad but needs to be put light on.

I want to rate this book 3 out of 4 stars because of the typos. It was very realistic and meaningful. There were many instances of sexual and physical violence against women, As well as many instances of profanity. I would recommend this book to everybody except for those people who are sensitive to violence, and sexual abuse. The novel was excellent, I loved it.

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Kalayla
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[Kira Bonita Reece]

This is by far the best book I've read in a long while. I agreed with the points you've made in your review. I also like the way Lena tries to be a second mother to Kalayla