Posted on 29/11/2024 in Dorothy Says, My Diary
December’s Big Reveal Book Club Choice is . . .
It’s taken me a while to send you December’s book choice because I have been doing so many events. Since the beginning of September, I’ve had at least one event a week – plus a few family issues to sort out and I have been flat out!
Anyways, I’m hoping you’ll have a chance to read this book choicebefore our next meeting date of Tuesday 10 December, but no worries if you don’t get to it, come along anyway and we’ll chat books in general.
So, what’s the third TBR Book Club choice?
Well, I loved it, so do let me know on hello@dorothykoomson.co.uk if you’ve read the book and what you thought. And, as always, do send me other book suggestions that you think other people need to know about.
Talk to you soon.
Dorothy x
The Big Reveal Book Club Choice:
All That We’ve Got
TBRBC Headline: A deeply emotional and riveting tale that gives you a peek into the hidden lives of the people you see around you every day.
My thoughts: One of the best things about reading is that when you open the cover of a book or hit play on your audiobook, you get to step into other people’s lives. When you take that step, you discover so much about how other people think and feel; you learn that some people have realities that seem so far removed from yours but are actually very much like your life.
In All That We’ve Got, Jendella creates a tale so that allows you to almost experience the world of two young women in contemporary Britain and find out the things they have to do to survive and thrive in today’s world.
Mimi is a young mother who is desperate to move on from the fraught and emotional circumstances around her son’s conception and birth; Abi is a teen who gets herself into terrifying trouble trying to financially help her mother after the loss of her father. The two of them are neighbours and their paths initially cross in a takeaway one night when Mimi buys a cash-strapped Abi some food.
Their lives keep crossing and intertwining until they seem bound together by Fate itself. This book covers so many real-world subjects – from how young people get caught up in county lines to the real reasons behind the Black Lives Matter protests, from teen grooming to zero-hour contracts – giving very real and emotional context to what we see in the headlines every day.
I tell you, at some points my heart was racing and I was on edge with anxiety willing the characters to be OK, the next I was welling up at the gut-wrenching situations they were in. But I can’t lie, there were a few laughs, too.
This novel also makes the point that I’ve been harping on about for years, one that I’ve seen Jendella make too – we need to build communities to get us through the difficult times as well as to help us to celebrate the good times. Community, finding others around us to share our world with, really improves our lives and helps us to achieve so much more than we can sitting alone in our homes, resenting those around us. Community really is all that we’ve got, and this wonder of a novel shows us why and how.
All That We’ve Got is an easy read, but that does not mean lightweight or frivolous (though I am all for that in a book), it simply means don’t dismiss it by thinking it’s too high brow or trauma-laden to enjoy.
TBRBC verdict: All That We’ve Got is an achingly beautiful tale about the real people behind sensationalist headlines, and it is so perfectly crafted that it has your heart in your throat at so many points, while simultaneously pulling at your heartstrings. I enjoyed every single page.
