Review of Deceptive Calm

[Jessica Bracken]

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

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4 out of 5 stars

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Deceptive Calm by author Patricia Skipper is, in my opinion, a great book. The story follows the lives of three young people (admittedly focusing on some more than others) who grew up together in South Carolina during the Jim Crow era. Vanessa, one of the main characters, is a very light-skinned Black girl, who most people believe to be white, and she learns that life can be easier for her if she changes her identity and allows the world to view her in that way. However, this story shows how a falsehood about one’s identity can ruin one’s life.

There were a few grammatical errors, mostly in the form of run-on sentences, but if you can get past that and truly just take in the storyline, it is a beautiful and heart-wrenching story about growing up during a time of not only racial injustice but also sexism. The story highlights the difficulty that Black people, as well as any who dared to befriend them, went through in that era, and the harsh realities they had to face on a daily basis, and when doing basic daily activities, like riding a bus to school. It is also a story about how women had to fight hard for what they wanted instead of just running to a man to care for her. There are also some historical ‘fun-facts’ thrown in as a diversion, I believe, to lend a bit of comedy to what could have been a tragically sad story.

If you have a hard time with curse words and sexually explicitly written passages, and if you have a hard time reading about the hardships that women have faced in the past, this may not be the best book for you, but if you can get past that and just read the story for what it is, I believe most would enjoy it. As far as giving a star rating, I would give this book three stars. If not for some sideline interjections that may not have been necessarily needed, the story was great and would be one that I will read again.

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Deceptive Calm
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