Review of Deceptive Calm

[earnedit]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Deceptive Calm" by Patricia Skipper.]

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2 out of 5 stars

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Deceptive Calm takes place in South Carolina in 1968 when racism was high and the KKK was openly attacking Black people. This was a time of segregation. The story starts with Vanessa, an orphan, and her friend Trisha when they were teenagers. Vanessa is a light-skinned Black person, and Trisha is a white person. Vanessa’s color and orphan history have become problems in her love life multiple times. She finds the birth certificate of a white girl who died years ago and decides to claim it to make her life easier. After the death of her orphanage mother, the nun, Vanessa, decides to run away and make a name for herself in journalism. She then meets a rich guy from San Francisco whom she marries, but he and his family are abusive towards her, and they aren't thrilled, especially when they find out about her being Black.
 
I liked the friendship bond that Vanessa and Trisha shared. This book also showed the power of money and systematic racism that we have in our society through this story.
 
I will give this book 2 out of 5. Personally, the Southern drawl, along with the religious content and the history lessons, was off-putting for me. It felt like a history book. They also had a lot of unnecessary story parts that had nothing to do with the story. Some events took place without any explanation, and I wondered if I had just missed something. Upon rereading the last few paragraphs, it turned out we were never told how and when those events took place; for example, someone intoxicated Trisha. This book could have been shorter. It was difficult to finish it. It needed another chapter or an epilogue to wrap up so many loose ends.
 
The sexual scenes are very mechanical in description and not romantic at all. It feels weird reading them. They get very disturbing and turn into rape scenes. This might be too much for some readers.
 
The editing wasn’t bad. I found a few things that I marked, but overall it was fine for the length of the book. The quality of writing is not good, though. People who love to learn historical facts might like this book a little more than I did.

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Deceptive Calm
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