Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

The Stars and the Blackness Between them by Junauda Petrus is a mesmerizing book. It’s poetic and beautiful and if it doesn’t make you feel all the feelings, then you’re probably missing your heart and should see someone about that.

It broke me into a million little pieces but simultaneously filled me up with light and hope and wonder. It’s told from two perspectives, 16-year-old Audre from Trinidad who is sent to the USA to live with her father, when her mother finds her with her secret girlfriend, and 16-year-old Mabel who lives in Minneapolis.

The two girls have such different stories, upbringings and family lives, but their worlds collide at the time when they both need each other the most. Their story is full of magic, and a love that will make you want to weep. There is no way I can do this book justice in a review, but just thinking about the book has me tearing up while I write. Some books just have the power to change you forever, and this is one of those books for me.

I can hardly believe this is the author’s first novel. It is nothing short of brilliant. The leading ladies, and supporting characters, are rich and nuanced and you’ll feel as if you are there with them every step of the way.

Despite having finished this several weeks ago I can not stop thinking about it. Initially I listened to the audiobook, which is so beautifully narrated byJunauda Petrus, Bahni Turpin and JD Jackson, but I had to buy a physical copy too because this is definitely one I will be re-reading.

You can grab a copy of the audiobook here, and if you’d like a physical copy click the button below.

Synopsis:

Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus’s bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.

Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.

Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.

Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.

Junauda Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.