ARC AUDIO BOOK REVIEW: The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman

Publication Date: June 28, 2022 Format: Audio Genre:  YA AA fiction  Narrators: Ariel Blake

Publisher: Macmillan Audio Length: 8 hours 43 min Buy: Kindle | Audio

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Beau Willet has dreams of being an artist and one day leaving the Chicago projects she’s grown up in. But after her older sister, Katia, is killed by an off-duty police officer, Beau knows she has to clear her sister’s name by finding the only witness to the murder; Katia’s no-good boyfriend, Jordan, who has gone missing. If she doesn't find him and tell the world what really happened, Katia's death will be ignored, like the deaths of so many other Black women who are wrongfully killed.

With the help of her friend, Sonnet, Beau sets up a Twitter account to gather anonymous tips. But the more that Beau finds out about her sister's death, the more danger she finds herself in. And with a new relationship developing with her childhood friend, Champion, and the struggle to keep her family together, Beau is soon in way over her head. How much is she willing to risk to clear her sister's name and make sure she's not forgotten?

Review: 

I receive this book from the publisher through netgalley.com I am voluntarily leaving this review. 

I had to sit with this one for a minute.  What a powerful book.  As someone who just lost a twenty year old child to drugs less than a year ago this one hit home.  The grief in this book is so powerful and raw it brought up a lot for me. I felt the characters emotions, understood why the mother couldn't get out of bed and the father who couldn't stay in the house.  I understood Beau's need to clear her sisters name, for Beau, she needed to know the why for closure.  Unfortunately some of us don't get that but this was a book and it was so well done. 

So many topics were touched on in this book, race, economic inequality, privilege, its all there and its powerful. The narrator was fantastic and really brought me into the story.  I sometimes forgot that it was an audio book I could see the story unfolding so vividly in my head. 

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