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A loose sequel to the transcendent The First Part Last, with Bobby and Feather as supporting characters in a story about 14-year-old Marley, whose life in idyllic Heaven, Ohio falls apart when she finds out that she was adopted. I am happy to report that, in a story in which all the characters are African-American, the cover depicts a black girl.
I enjoyed reading this, but it was a like-not-love. The prose was gorgeous and evocative, laced with humor and moments of poetic beauty, and the emotions and characters were believable. But while one of the themes was that there’s more to life than meets the eye and that Heaven isn’t as perfect as it seems, a lot of the story still seemed overly idealized. So did Bobby and Feather, which was not the case in The First Part Last. (If Feather had ever had a huge tantrum and driven everyone crazy, it would have gone a long way toward making the whole book work for me.) I also never really understood why Marley’s parents didn’t tell her the truth from the beginning.
Heaven
I enjoyed reading this, but it was a like-not-love. The prose was gorgeous and evocative, laced with humor and moments of poetic beauty, and the emotions and characters were believable. But while one of the themes was that there’s more to life than meets the eye and that Heaven isn’t as perfect as it seems, a lot of the story still seemed overly idealized. So did Bobby and Feather, which was not the case in The First Part Last. (If Feather had ever had a huge tantrum and driven everyone crazy, it would have gone a long way toward making the whole book work for me.) I also never really understood why Marley’s parents didn’t tell her the truth from the beginning.
Heaven
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