One thing leads to another and Nadia discovers that she is pregnant. With no real outlet to express her feelings at home, she finds solace with a beautiful, older boy named Luke, who also happens to be the pastor’s son. We first meet Nadia when she is seventeen years old, a senior in high school, as she is preparing to leave home for college while grieving her mother who recently died by suicide. We follow them as they find themselves, find each other, and work through the ghosts of their pasts. We follow them through loss, heartbreak, past trauma, and we watch them as they grow into adulthood. THE MOTHERS tells the story of Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey, who all grew up together in the same Southern California town. I recently read somewhere that the beauty of books is that they wait (very patiently) until you’re ready to read them, and that books will come to you when you need them the most. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that shape our lives forever.Įmbarrassingly enough, I’ve had THE MOTHERS on my bookshelf for over a year now. In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a “what if” can be more powerful than an experience itself. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance-and the subsequent cover-up-will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. Mourning her own mother’s recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor’s son. It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. “All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we’d taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season.”

Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett’s mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition.

The mothers by brit bennett