Hi everyone! How are you? 😀
Today I want to make a book recommendation. For each month I will recommend one book and I will try to include a little review of the book.
The book I recommend for March is The Cost of Knowing Brittney Morris.
If you use my link you will have two free months and I will have one free month for every person.
Title: The Cost of Knowing
Author: Brittney Morris
Genre: fiction, contemporary, young adult, magical realism
Trigger warnings: racism, gun violence, hate crime, grief, mental illness, death of a loved one, anxiety, mass shooting
Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus is trying his best. He tries to be the best employee he can be at the local ice cream shop; the best boyfriend he can be to his amazing girlfriend, Talia; the best protector he can be over his little brother, Isaiah. But as much as Alex tries, he often comes up short.
It’s hard to for him to be present when every time he touches an object or person, Alex sees into its future. When he touches a scoop, he has a vision of him using it to scoop ice cream. When he touches his car, he sees it years from now, totaled and underwater. When he touches Talia, he sees them at the precipice of breaking up, and that terrifies him. Alex feels these visions are a curse, distracting him, making him anxious and unable to live an ordinary life.
And when Alex touches a photo that gives him a vision of his brother’s imminent death, everything changes.
With Alex now in a race against time, death, and circumstances, he and Isaiah must grapple with their past, their future, and what it means to be a young Black man in America in the present.
REVIEW – When I started reading this book I didn’t know how strong and impactful this story is and because of that it became one of my favourite books.
Brittney Morris’ writing was so good and real that it made me feel what the main character was feeling, the anxiety, the fear and the need to protect everyone that he loved. This is the type of story that you want to protect each character and take away their pain. The type of story that reflects reality like a mirror.
You follow this story with the main character, Alex. After he loses his parents in an accident he can see the future of everything that he touches, objects and/or people. The book follows his day to day life working in an ice cream shop and you will see his vision or him trying to block them and that can make the book a little repetitive. I think that the author did that so that the reader would feel the type of anxiety and frustration that Alex was feeling and by doing that you would be really immersed in the story.
I really liked his point of view but I also would like to read from Isaiah and explore more about his power.
One of my favorite parts about this book was that it talks about the love between brothers.
Let’s talk about the last part of this book. So I truly wasn’t expecting that what happened in the last part would really happen and it made me cry, a side note it is rare for me to cry with books.
I really recommend everyone to read this book, and also look for trigger warnings and read own voices reviews. You can find this amazing book on Everand.
“My dad’s words come back…
A man’s not a man without his paycheck.
And what I thought when I left Scoop’s…
But a man who doesn’t protect his family is no man either.
And my add-on…
But one man can’t protect everyone.
And a wave of peace comes over me as I bring it full circle.
And a boy shouldn’t have to try.”
I AM ANA DUARTE 