Title: One of the Good Ones
Author: Maika Moulite; Maritza Moulite
Genre: YA
Rating: 4 out of 5
When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.
One of the good ones.
Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected—one that will change everything all over again.
The writing here is stellar, and the authors tackle an important and emotional subject with grace and emotion. I was drawn into the story from the beginning. However, when the twist was revealed about ¾ of the way in, that changed the whole book for me, and almost completely erased the impact that reading it had had.
As an author, you don’t want your readers to find your story boring or predictable, but you also don’t want them to lose faith in you as a writer, either, and that is exactly how I felt: I can’t trust these authors to not flip the script over halfway through the book, so I probably won’t read more of them.
Maika and Maritza Moulite are sisters and authors. One of the Good Ones is their newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of Inkyard Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 