A heartbreaking portrait of the impact of incarceration on a marriage. Just really well written and powerful.

Excellent, nuanced, believable story told from the points of view of three people who get tangled up in a miscarriage of justice and the resultant fallout.

This book allows us a glimpse inside a marriage that has been torn apart when the husband is unfairly incarcerated. It is told from the alternating points of view of both the husband and wife as they make difficult choices or learn to cope when they have no choices at all. This character driven book is thought provoking and moving. A good book for readers who like to feel invested in the characters of a book.

I'm somewhere between 2 stars and 4 on this book. The story is interesting but the characters felt flat, written at a distance by the author, and could have been even more powerful and expressive of racial and judicial inequality. The last chapters made it worth staying but left me feeling that I read a draft and that it could have been more powerful with another revision.

Perhaps one needs to be an American and/or
African- American to get what all the hype is about.
I am neither.

The characters are not terribly interesting and the
narrative is pretty much predictable.
Middle class family comes apart when husband is
wrongfully convicted.

This book should be in the fantasy section. Who are these people - the Huxtables? And the portrayal of prison does a disservice to the real conditions of incarceration.

A compelling, character-driven story about how a black man's incarceration for a crime he didn't commit impacts his relatively new marriage to an aspiring artist. Told in alternating points of view between couple Ray and Celestial, this is a tough and emotional read at points, but well worth the time and emotional investment. (Rumor has it that the audiobook is very good too--it has dual narrators to capture the two strong voices of the book's central couple.)

Favorite book so far this year

Wow. Just wow. What masterpiece. The set-up. The characters. The social commentary. The brilliantly plotted story. What binds these characters - including the secrets and histories that are told in confidence to each. I could not put down this book. I was next to these characters...with them in rooms and cars and reading the letters between them. I was rooting for them, commiserating with them and watching and waiting to see what will transpire between them. I don't want to say anything that will spoil this trajectory. There is the overall story but there is the subtext, breathing and gaining life behind the larger plot points. This bittersweet story will stay with me for a long time.

Tayari Jones surely demonstrated why she is an award winning author. Injustice, betrayal and true love are caught in the path of a marriage. Life seems to be a dream for Roy and Celestial as newlyweds but then a horrific event occurs that crashes their lives. Best friend, Andre, and an un expected meeting between Roy and his biological father enters into the plot twist. Jones develops the characters as skillfully as she unrolls the plot.