Unrelated in any way..

other than that I read one right after the other...

The Importance of Being Kennedy, by Laurie Graham. This just struck me as being one of 'those' books, that might be entertaining. Its based on the facts of the Kennedy children and lives, but just lightly fictionalized as seen through the eyes of the nanny who raised them. It was fascinating to see the older children, and the children who were not talked about, and the things that were unspoken. The author did a good job of putting in little 'future nudges' (aka foreshadowing), where you read it and you knew what it was referring to. It was a light book that hung together well. It had a point of view and a direction, and you learned something from reading it.

Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo. I wanted to really like this book. I liked the premise, and I liked elements of it, but I felt that the author took the easy way out in some ways. She almost just flipped slavery on its head, so to speak, without working in more socio-economic factors somehow. It was almost to see if she could do it... and it almost worked, but not quite, because I kept feeling like the heroine was a black slave instead of a white one. I wish she had done something more creative with the geography as well... instead of just flipping the map a little. She just didn't go far enough with the concept, somehow. Because she had some wonderful elements in it, and some wonderful characterizations with the blacks being the masters and the whites being subordinate... I liked it, but I felt it could have been better, deeper, more powerful.