I know February is almost over, but let’s talk about January because that’s when I finally made it to two books that have been on my TBR list for a while. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett was probably the most hyped book of 2020. I read Bennett’s first novel, The Mothers, a few years ago and loved it. So I thought this one was worth a try.

The Vanishing Half is about twin sisters, Desiree and Stella, who run away from their small town in Louisiana in 1950’s. They both have very light skin (pretty much like everyone else in their small town), so Stella uses that to her advantage to pass for white to get a job. But she actually continues to live as a white woman and becomes estranged from her family.  Desiree marries a man with much darker skin which their child inherits. She and her daughter end up back in the small town, where her daughter is made to feel like an outsider.

The story follows the lives of the twins and their own daughters throughout the years and when the daughters eventually meet each other. Obviously, this story touches on colorism in a very literal way. But I think reinvention is also the main theme of the story as well. Even though the characters have grown into adults, everyone is still trying to find themselves.

I can’t say if I like this story better than The Mothers, because I feel like these novels are very different from each other. It took a little bit of time for me to really get into it, but the characters were extremely interesting. I loved the chapters that followed Desiree’s daughter, Jude, and the ones that focused on Stella.

Now to the other book I read in January: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle. This was the first book I read by Serle. I will say it ended up going in a very different direction than I expected. In Five Years is about Dannie Kohan, who is type-A and seems like she has her life together. In fact, she actually has a five year plan.

The story starts when Dannie is 28. She is a lawyer who is extremely dedicated to her career. She lives with her boyfriend in New York City. In the first few chapters, she has a pretty good day. She crushes her job interview, has a nice dinner with her boyfriend who proposes and she goes home and falls asleep. She wakes up five years in the future next to someone who is not her fiancé. She spends the present day and the years leading up to that moment trying to avoid it.

I think the description on the book jacket made it sound more like a fantasy than it actually is. I thought there would be magic or time travel in the story. But I think the fact of Danny waking up to her life in five years was actually just a really intuitive dream (sorry for the mild-ish spoiler).

Everything plays out at an even pace. I wouldn’t say this was a page turner necessarily. I could definitely understand some people finding it to be a bit slow or dull in some parts like where she goes into detail about what it’s really like to be a lawyer. But I was curious to see where the story would go and I found the lawyer parts kind of interesting, because I like hearing about other people’s jobs.

A key character in this story is Dannie’s best friend Bella, who is basically her polar opposite. She lives this spontaneous and care-free life. Something happens to Bella that tests Dannie’s friendship with her and brings out a different side of Dannie. I’m not going to say what it is, but it’s definitely a curveball for Dannie. Overall, I don’t think there’s much to complain about with my January reads. I gained some new perspectives and I hope you will too if you take time to read these novels.