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Hey y'all! We record our next book club chat in ONE WEEK, and we'd love to hear from YOU! What'd you think of this book? Did it make you think differently about race and identity? Were there any moments that stuck with you? TELL US EVERYTHING!

I LOVED this book. For one, it shows us how race is an illusion, something socially constructed that truly means nothing until we ascribed meaning to it. And the ramifications of those meanings last generations.
On a more granular scale, these characters were beautiful. Reece, June, and Early stand out as favorites. Reece and Early are especially gentle men, a facet of masculinity that seems a little more challenging to write but so impactful when done well. And the fact that the trans representation was treated as simply a facet of Reece’s identity and not like A Big Thing (TM) was super refreshing.
Chefs kiss. 10/10 would recommend.

The Vanishing Half was so beautiful I had to slow myself down and not devour it in one sitting. I didn't want it to end.

Everything in this novel seems to be crafted with such love and clarity. I felt myself tipping into each location in the book as Bennett wove detailed imagery with the characters emotions. I also agree with Renee that the characters were exquisite and that their identities were handled with care and integrity.

I've recommending this book to the fellow white people in my life who are feeling overwhelmed but motivated to keep pushing for BLM and racial justice. Though this book was in no ways "light" reading, Bennett's masterful weaving of intimate details of Black life, history, identity, and love in this story helped me reflect on current events perhaps in a more meaningful way than reading a book "about race".

I really enjoyed reading this book, though it’s well outside my normal diet of genre fiction.

The writing is solid throughout and there are a number of wonderful paragraphs that made me stop and say, “Wow!� And I love that it doesn’t take the obvious option of having everything blow up when Jude tells Kennedy and Stella that she knows who they are - someone says “the thing that can’t be unheard� and life just goes on.

The characters are great, even when they are irritatingly stubborn. Bennet is kind to her characters; she doesn’t paint them as good guys and bad guys - they just make different choices and live with them.

I really enjoyed this one. The settings were evocative and the characters were so well developed that when I wasn’t reading I was still thinking of them. It is a very immersive story in which you HAVE to know what happens next!