SYNOPSIS

In her senior year of high school, Avery is forced to move from Washington D.C. to Bardell, Georgia, her mom’s hometown town, to take care of Mama Letty, Avery’s grandmother, who is dying from cancer. The plan was to get in, get out, and keep her head down, but Avery wants to connect with her grandmother, who, for reasons unknown to her, she hasn’t seen in years. Avery also meets and gets close to her neighbor and her neighbor’s friend, whose family owns the hotel and spa in town.

What could happen?

RECAP AND REVIEW

We Deserve Monuments is a standalone, young adult, contemporary coming of age book with elements of romance and mystery.

Avery juggles a lot. She is dealing with the culture shock of moving to a new town, her conflicted feelings from her recent breakup, upcoming college applications and the future, and getting to know her sick grandma, while trying to heal the wounds between her grandma and mother.

Avery learned more about herself and gained some confidence. Mama Letty was curt and mean, accepting of her fate, but still weirdly likable, to me. Avery’s mom didn’t know how to cope with her past and was forced to face her inner child with the move.

I like the writing style in this book. I liked a majority of the one- or two-paged chapters in between Avery’s story that added some context. Although, I prefer stories that get wrapped up with a pretty bow, I greatly appreciate that parts of this book were left up to interpretation. Most of the rumors, whispers, and assumptions are left as they are with little confirmation.

I found the story to be poetic and realistic. We don’t always find out the truth. Our own beliefs become reality. We are multifaceted, in beneficial and problematic ways. Racism and bigotry destroys families. Grief has the potential to destroy us and family dynamics are complicated.

Relationships and history between family members, or family adjacent, have been established prior to our existence and we only witness parts of those relationships. There will be aspects we don’t understand and some of it may not be for us to.

The romance that develops is sweet and also a little sad, because of the fear of being queer in a small town. This also gets left as a cliffhanger in a sense, because we leave off in the present. There’s no epilogue to tell us how it all ends because what matters is where they are now and what the character’s first real love means to one another. Plus, they’re young.

The microagressions and discussions about whiteness in the book were real. Being white and living on a plantation is wild. Like do you not feel the spirits and the history there?

Also, we know how one part of the story will end, and I was still emotional when it happened.

I don’t think there’s anything in the book I would change. I came into this review, thinking the book was four stars for me, but I can’t even remember what I didn’t like about it because I think whatever it was made sense for the story when you remember it’s a YA book and Avery is young (17).

OVERALL

Overall, I give this book a 5 out of 5 stars. The parallels were cool and as this review shows, I received a lot out of this story. Generational trauma and fear of acceptance (with sexuality, with race, with physical presentation, with peers, with family, literally with anything) is real. The messages in this book were beautiful, especially the ones delivered by Avery’s dad.