The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half 

by Brit Bennett

Hello everyone and happy new year :) Here I am with a new review of a historical fiction novel. 

Check out my last review about A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas :)

---

Today's review will be about the book The Vanishing Half, by the American author Brit Bennett. 

---

The book is pretty recent considered that it came out in 2020. It's her second book, the first one was The Mothers, check that one out too. They both became best sellers. 

The novel is a multi generational family story set between the 1940s and 1990s and centers on two identical twins and their following lives, Desiree and Stella Vignes. 

The two light-skinned black sisters were raised in a small town in Louisiana called Mallard. They are raised by the mother, Adele, since they lost their dad after being lynched by a group of white people. The twins sadly witness the event. 

At the age of 16, the twins decide to flee the town and move to New Orleans to start a new life, but shortly after, Stella leaves without letting Desiree know and disappears into nothingness. 

After this event we will see the lives apart of the twins, how one of them married a black abusive man and got a child, deciding after to escape from this, taking the child with her back to Mallard. While the other twin, lived a parallel life, she acted through her whole existence acting as a white woman. 

The novel has a nonlinear narrative structure and deals with the themes of colorism and domestic abuse. 

HBO also announced that they're planning to do a tv series about it, so can't wait for it to be out :)

---

I bought this book after being attracted by the plot and soon after it arrived home everyone on Instagram seemed to be obsessed with it, so I thought it must have been a really good book. 

And I wasn't disappointed at all. The way that Ms Bennett leads you through the book is marvellous, I didn't find the flashbacks and flashforward confusing as some people said, but everything was explained perfectly and it made it interesting. 

The book opened my mind way more than I thought and left me with a bit of sadness towards the ending because it reminded me of my grandma that sadly isn't here anymore, but otherwise the book was really good and I'm glad I picked it up.

One of the best things that occurred while reading was the fact that the picture showed in this review was liked by the author on my Instagram account ;)