The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: All That We’ve Got
Author: Jendella Benson
Published: July 2024
Genre: Literary
Themes: Coming of age, female friendship, community.

One sentence summary: An unlikely friendship forms after to women get caught up interconnected issues.

One sentence review: A coming of age novel with some serious bite!

Review:

Mimi and Abi are neighbours and normally wouldn’t have anything to do with one another; Mimi is busy working out whether she’s going to back college and looking after her son, while Abi is enjoying a Summer of freedom from school.

But this is the Summer that changes all of that. The two become involved in each others lives in ways they wouldn’t have imagined.

Benson has absolutely done it again. She writes family and friendship bonds with such talent, her books are always a pleasure to read, despite the utter heartbreak they put you through. I love the depth her characters have too, Abi was a stand out for me – her stubborn loyalty to her friends and unwavering nerve of a young teen who knows what’s right and wrong in the world. Chefs kiss.

Despite not being described as a thriller, the amount that happens in this book and the twists it takes made me genuinely fear for some of these characters, I had to keep reading to know they would be okay. This is a coming of age novel with some serious bite!

As always, Benson writes and comments on important aspects of today’s world too including protesting and police brutality. She’s also done something incredible with this book which is not placing it anywhere in particular and it’s so well done.

If you know me, you know one of my signs of a great book is that it made me sob, it’s something that got under my skin and I felt it in me. This is one of them for sure. There were multiple parts

Huge thank you to Trapeze Books for the copy of this book. I actually switched between the physical copy and the audiobook (bought myself) and that really added to the experience.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here.

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Last updated 04/11/2024