A really enjoyable novel following the fortune of two light-skinned black twins who leave home at a young age and each make choices that determine their futures. The novel considers identity and belonging in a fresh and interesting way, following several different characters over the years.
This is a very thought-provoking read which I thoroughly enjoyed. I also liked that the novel had several really positive male characters, which added further depth to the story.

Absolutely adored this book! First time I have read any of Brit Bennett's work and I have already ordered her previous novel. Full review to follow!

Thanks to #netgalley for my copy of ‘The vanishing half’ in exchange for an honest review.

I came late to the party, with this. Brit Bennett is only 30, yet, impressingly, she has 2 novels under her belt. Her latest novel ‘The vanishing half’, is a 2020 publishing sensation, a @nytimes bestseller for at least 7 weeks now.

I liked this well enough. But given the enthusiasm & hype surrounding it, I was left disappointed, wanting more. You might already know the plot. Twins Desiree & Stella live in (fictional) Mallard Louisiana, a gossipy, claustrophobic, bigoted small town where ‘passing for white’ is valued, and where each generation, through inter-marrying, aims to be lighter-skinned. The twins leave town; eventually one disappears- deciding to live a life passing as a white woman- while the other, as an adult, returns to town. Desiree & Stella have one daughter each, girls who grow up not knowing about each other, but whose lives eventually intersect.

A sub-plot, less developed, involves a loving relationship between Jude, Desiree’s daughter, and Reese, a young trans man, coming out & finding his way in 70s America.

Despite the promising plot, the characters fall flat, rather than being fully developed people. The novel however raises fascinating questions:

Why did the girls leave home?

Why did Stella want to pass as white?

Is Stella ‘white’? is she ‘black’? How does she feel & how do others see her?

What was Reese’s back story? We meet him when he’s come out as trans, leaving his family behind. What came before?

Is passing ever a positive? Is it always a negative? What about gender, race, class…how do we understand ‘passing’ in each category?

Who are we really? is our identity a performance, something we choose, or it what we are?

Do we have a ‘real self’ inside?

A fascinating question from the @newyorkermag: ‘who decides what’s real, the actor or the audience?’

How does class come into it all?

How & when is it acceptable to leave family behind?

‘The vanishing half’ would be excellent for a book club, for the questions it raises. Bennett doesn’t go far with these questions. But it’s rare that a novel leaves the reader with so many fascinating ‘what ifs’.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this arc. I’ve heard lots of good things about The Vanishing Half, so was excited to read this, and this is truly a phenomenal read about identity and race. A book exploring race across two generations. Nicely plotted, with stunningly observed interactions and taut prose.

This is written in close third-person. The opening chapter sets the scene in Mallard, a small town a few hours near New Orleans, where Desiree is spotted returning to her hometown clutching her six-year old daughter, Jude’s hand. The narrative zips to the past and present, and we learn Desiree ran away from home when she was sixteen-years old with her twin sister, Stella, after their mother had them dropping out of school and working as maid in rich white people’s house to earn a living and help her financially run their home.
Desiree and Stella are fair-skinned American-Africans. Their family ancestors had meticulously married other fair American-Africans in the hope of eradicating their black skin. However, in their small town they’re still treated as black, with the twins’ father being horrifically lynched one night, and going to separate schools from the whites.
Once the twins are in New Orleans a short while later Stella decides to pass as white and moves away to Boston with her boss, a wealthy white man who she later marries, while Desiree meets a black man with dark skin and they have a daughter who inherits her father’s dark skin.
Over the course of the novel we follow Desiree’s story first, then Jude’s who moves to California to go to college on an athlete’s scholarship, where she spots Stella, with the second half of the novel focusing on Stella and her daughter who are living as white people.

This is a brilliantly captivating character-driven read. I was so invested in the protagonists who are so emotionally engaging that I was eager to follow their lives. I guess the plot is watching these characters’ lives unfold and hoping they stay safe and have happy conclusions. I read this in two sittings, I was so utterly immersed. A brilliant window into the lives of marginalised people, this book explores colourism, and internalised racism, and how it affects one’s self-esteem. The colourism aspect particularly was relatable to me as an British-Asian woman as in my community fair-skin is also perceived as desirable with skin-lightening creams being actively promoted, and there is a lot of preferential treatment and favouritism in our families for children who are more fairer skinned, with darker skinned children being put down by their mothers and grandparents, and pressurised to indulge in treatments to lighten their skin and taught that their worth is equated to their skin colour resulting in a lack of confidence and low self-esteem.
This is a topical book, exploring crucial issues about race and identity, and how racism is internalised by its victims, who make excuses for their oppressors and manifests in being complacent in a flawed system that favours whiteness perpetuating hatred in order to survive. Definitely one of my favourite books of the year so far. Brit Bennett writes characters who are messy and complex, yet so relatable with fleshed out psyches and amazingly observed psychological insights on what drives them. 5/5.

The Vanishing Half was my first book by Brit Bennett.

Page one was enough for me to be captivated by the story. Her writing is so good.

There's two storylines developing, the main one the relation between the twins and the second the stories of their very different daughters. I felt very moved by both in equal parts and for different reasons.

I think that one thing I could appreciate as powerful of the book is the essence of how one can be their own worst judge.  Also a reminder that pretending to be something we are not can be exhausting .

I wanted more and a different ending. But I guess it was realistic, life not always giving you what you want, people not always acting like you'd expect.

Stella and Desiree, twins brought up in a poor black community where lighter skin is more valued. Seeking to escape this backwater, the young women move to New Orleans. One chooses to emphasise her black roots, the other turns her back on them.

The book shows the results of those choices, both on the twins and their daughters, told through the everyday events of their lives and the choices open to the different generations as we travel from the 60s into the near-present.

Racism and white privilege is at the core of this story and there is no overt condemnation of any of the choices made. The ridiculousness of a society where life chances are affected by 'race' is made plain and it clearly shows the heavy burden on those whose choices are affected by it.

One of the daughters has a relationship with a transgender man which adds further thought to issues of identity and the reluctance of society to accept 'difference'.

A thoughtful and well-written story. The shift of focus between characters works well throughout and the issues are made explicit in a subtle and effective manner. Highly recommended.

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It was great fun to read this one with @sianibubble who I think nailed it when she said this was a great summer read.
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I will be brief as I think #bookstagram is filled with this one and I probably can't add anything that hasn't already been said. I will say that it's certainly worth the read as it makes you consider what sacrifices you would make to live the life you dream of. The world is an unfair place when someone has to walk away from everything they love to be the person they want to be. This is a novel of love, sacrifice, family and longing and it's one that will stay with you.
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I look forward to reading Brit Bennett's The Mothers.

The Vignes twins, Stella and Desiree, grow up together in a small, southern, black community. Mallard is a town that Desiree longs to escape. And so, aged sixteen, the twins run away to New Orleans in search of somewhere new. It is here that their lives diverge. When Stella takes on a new job, she “passes” as white and becomes involved with her employer. It isn’t long before she abandons her sister, leaving her family forever. Despite the miles and decades of silence between them, Stella and Desiree will always be intertwined. When their own daughters meet coincidentally many years later, the secrets and lies of their mothers’ past collide.

The Vanishing Half is the first novel by Brit Bennett that I’ve read, but it certainly won’t be the last. Bennett is the ultimate storyteller. This book is the opposite of a ‘slow-burn’ - it delves straight into the lives of the Vignes twins and gripped me from the very first page.

Bennett gives so much time and attention to each of her central characters’ innermost thoughts, feelings and worries. While one sister is desperate to find her ‘vanished’ other half, the other sister is equally desperate never to be found. Having read other novels that address the concept of ‘passing’ in American literature (namely Passing by Nella Larsen, published in 1929), The Vanishing Half builds upon the literary trope. The way she writes Stella’s story - her life choices, her constant state of fear and her emotional turmoil - is empathetic, unflinching and compassionate. Early on, we discover that the twins’ father was brutally murdered by racists. Desiree remembers her father’s skin “so light that, on a cold morning, she could turn over his arm to see the blue of his veins. But none of that mattered when the white men came for him.” This traumatising moment enables readers to see the twins’ future choices and motivations with even greater clarity.

This novel is interested in how the past impacts the future and the many reasons why a person may feel compelled to leave the past behind. It’s a beautifully written, emotionally intelligent, complex story that will make you think about the prejudice that still exists today and the deep rooted, unjust inequalities in society that make some peoples’ lives infinitely more challenging than others. Bennett explores race, sexuality, transitioning gender, poverty, family and so much more in between. The incredible story of the Vignes twins and their daughters will be read and reread for many years to come.

3.5 stars.

I was really looking forward to reading this one after seeing all the hype and rave reviews and as much as I enjoyed the premise of the novel, the actual substance fell short for me.

The book centres around the Vignes twins, Desiree and Stella who grow up in the nondescript black/brown town of Mallard in Louisiana. At sixteen, the twins run away seeking a better, more exciting life than Mallard can ever give them. Realising she can pass as white, Stella takes her opportunity to leave her black life behind and disappears, leaving her twin sister behind. Later in life, the twins give birth to daughters, who coincidentally meet in Los Angeles. The story follows each woman, throughout different phases of their lives, exploring identity and race, as well as dreams, desires, and expectations.

I really loved the idea of this book. I have never heard of passing before so this was a completely new thing I was able to learn about and experience through Stella. I thought the storyline with Jude and Reese was compelling but wished there had been more focus there. I felt it wasn't quite an accurate portrayal of how that would have been received in that era. It felt more of a sideline and I wanted it to have more depth if it was to be explored fully. I also wanted there to be more focus overall - there was a lot of skipping characters and timelines and just as I was getting invested in one character and their era, the chapter ended and lurched into another time and character. It was as if the author wanted to cover all four female characters at multiple intervals in their lives which was just too disjointed for me. It also felt weird to focus so much on Jude but completely elude to her childhood. I would have preferred the book to switch between Desiree and Stella with their daughters featuring.

The book was well written and I'd definitely read the author's other works. Unfortunately, this one just went in a different direction to what I was hoping which just didn't work for me.

Excellent characters, an absorbing plot, very well-written and engaging. I felt it petered out a little towards the end and the final section didn’t quite live up the rest. I could have read an entire book just about Jude and Reese too! Still thoroughly recommended though, I was in a bit of a reading slump and this was the perfect book to get me out of it. Will definitely be getting my hands on a copy of Brit Bennett’s first book, Mothers as her writing is the best I’ve read in a while.

This review was part of my June Reading Wrap Up on my Youtube Channel (https://youtu.be/EeHywG9jLmg) and also featured in a New Releases Book Haul (https://youtu.be/-f39yG4sDLE)

I finished it several days ago but I feel like it's only beginning to sink in now just how brilliant The Vanishing Half really is. The novel starts off in a strange, fictional town called Mallard, which is filled by black people who seem to be obsessed with becoming lighter and lighter over generations through marriage. The people of the town are shocked when a set of twin girls run away from home in 1954, and are more shocked still when ten years later, Desiree returns after escaping an abusive marriage with a very dark skinned child in tow, with no idea where her twin sister Stella is. Stella, we later find out, has "passed over", as if through a veil, into white society. She has shed her past, much like a skin, to marry a wealthy white man who will never know her secret. The novel then follows both sisters and their own children in a kaladaiscopic view of race and gender and class and how they all intersect.

Deiree's marrying a black man disgusts the town, who believe that they should marry lighter, not darker than themselves. Though she runs away from her cruel husband, her daughter Jude bears the brunt of a lot of that hatred. The racism that this town seems to be built on, and their associations of good and bad with light and dark skin, is jarring and often bizzare but acts as an interesting allegory for race in the wider world. When Jude gets away from the town to go to college and meets a man who is trying to transition into looking like himself, and we see through him how black trans people have always existed.

Stella, meanwhile, the vanished twin lives a lie in glanourous white suburbia, but is never quite at peace there. When we finally meet her, she is raising a white child and a white husband, and has effectively passed into an "easier" life, but in some ways is far less free than her sister. Her successful charming husband and her charismatic, spoiled daughter can never really know who the real Stella is, and Stella's ambitions are curtailed by the expectations of her class.

This novel is complicated and it made me want to compare it to other works I loved, to try to pin down how I felt about it. I initially loved it as it reminded me of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and the film Sliding Doors, with shades of Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo, but these comparisons don't do justice to strange originality and the sometimes uncomfortable topics and viewpoints will stay with me for a long time.

I really enjoyed this absolutely brilliant book about identity & belonging. The Vanishing Half is the story of teenage twin sisters who run away from home, soon to be separated by the lie told by one.

Ten years on Desiree, a black mother escaping a violent marriage, returns to her hometown with her young daughter, whilst her twin Stella lives in wealth and privilege, passing as white woman. The repercussions of Stella’s deception ripple through their family, the next generation also impacted by the separation, loss and secrecy.

I loved Bennett’s writing, honest, nuanced and so intelligent, her characters are complex and fascinating, revealing tales of self discovery & hiding in plain sight. This is a fantastic book about wanting to change the story our origins tell about us and how a lie told often enough can eventually become the truth.

I read The Mothers, Brit Bennett’s first book, and loved it. So when this popped up on NetGalley, I knew I had to request it, and I was so pleased when I was given the opportunity to read it.

It’s a story about secrets, lies and reinvention - the sacrifices someone has to make in order to get the life they want. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Stella and Desirée Vignes are identical twin sisters, brought up in a small southern town, where all the inhabitants are black people who could pass for white people if they wanted to (which a very dangerous thing to try and do at the time the story is set).

The twins escape together, and then Stella leaves Desirée. Stella discovers that she can pass as white, and marries a wealthy white man, who knows nothing of her origins. Desirée marries a black man who beats her, and so she escapes back to her mother with her dark skinned daughter, Jude. Jude is never accepted in Desirée’s home town of Mallard, and so she leaves to go to university as soon as she is able to.

This is where Jude’s life unwittingly intersects with that of Stella’s daughter, and secrets that have been kept for so long, are brought out into the open.

I loved everything about this book. The characters and their motivations, the storyline, the way the book was written - everything! I could see why Stella did what she did, and how she felt trapped by her choices, and it’s a great example of how prejudice and racism works in the USA - and potentially here in the UK as well.

I really do highly recommend this book. It’s such a great story that kept me engaged from start to finish. I have to admit to reading it slower to make it last longer - it’s a book that I’ll be recommending to my friends, that’s for sure!

“You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood. Somehow, the Vignes twins believed themselves capable of both.”

The Vignes twin sisters, Stella and Desiree, will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined.What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
I fell in love with this book and the characters. There is so much that was brought to life but in a way that is thought provoking and enlightening. Brit delves into subjects that need to be discussed more; race, class, trauma, sexuality and gender but it doesn't come across preachy, it is written so well you want to know more about everything these characters are experiencing.
The story would have been better for me if there was more of everyone's story. Brit has created characters that are so strong and enticing that I wanted to learn everything about them.
Having said that, I felt the story was especially strong in the area of the way that Brit has written about the different backgrounds and hardship that each character has experienced. The narrative of the story is in the point of view of the twins and their daughters, but Jude especially will delve into the background of her trans boyfriend and their friend who does drag at the weekend. It is the vibrancy of these characters that helps bring the story to life and makes you love the characters even more.
I especially appreciated seeing how the twins made their decisions to separate and live their lives separately and as two different races. It highlights and exposes the convoluted hierarchies of American culture and society, which is eye opening to me as a white woman and made me more aware of how hard life can be for black people and I can see why Stella would choose to live as a white woman because of the privileges she receives when she does.
This is a beautiful book to read but there are some tough scenes to read, abuse within relationships, lynching of the girls father and racism that the twins and their daughters experience. That being said, it is these scenes that make it what it is and why it is such a powerful story.
Overall, this book is one of my favourite reads this year and I urge everyone to read it.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Vanishing Half is wonderful. I loved the parallels between Stella and Desiree and Jude and Kennedy. Bennett dealt with the tough themes of the book with nuance and I cannot wait to read her other work. A five star read.

I'm not sure I can add anything that's not already been said about this spectacular book already and lets not beat around the bush it is spectacular!
In a small American town called Mallard we follow the story of twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes, Two identical sisters but two completely different paths.
In a place where colourism is rife and dark skin isn't accepted one sister chooses to identify as black and the other white.
The implications this has for their community, their families and their personal life is enormous.
This is an electrifying and thought provoking read. Brit Bennett takes the reader and immerses us in the plot and the characters lives in such a raw and powerful way that this book often left me breathless.
The trauma these characters went through from the racially motivated murder of their father to the racism they received on a daily basis left me with so many emotions.
This book packs a lot of very timely and important topics and is dealt with in a thorough manner.
The writing is beautiful and Brit took me on a complete journey which will stay with me forever.
I urge everyone to read this book! If you read one book this year make it this one!

The Vanishing Half is a book very much for now. With its origin from the slave trade The Vanishing Half follows the story of the Vignes twins who are descendants of the founder of the town of Mallard, a town set up as being the child of a slave and slave master he wanted somewhere to fit in. Mallard's inhabitants pride themselves on the lightness of their skin colour. The twins disappear in the middle of the night aged 16 to reappear in New Orleans to find themselves new lives. As you read The Vanishing Half you learn more about the twins, and each ones reason for making the decisions they made that would separate them for good.
The racism they come up against and that some of them gave out themselves gives the story its edge and makes you think and compare what they experienced to today and question if attitudes have actually changed much at all.

I was given a copy of The Vanishing Half by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

I adored this novel, just like everyone else. It explores so many themes in a way that is not forced but demonstrates the intersectionality we experience in our everyday lives. Jude was by far my favourite character but I felt for every single person in this book, making choices that hurt others but understandable to an extent when contextualised by the white supremacist systems of society. Not only that, but it was an engrossing read with a pacy plot and phenomenal writing. I'll be recommending this wholeheartedly.

I was highly anticipating Brit Bennett's next book after reading The Mothers shortly after it came out. And we had to wait a bit, but it was worth it. I loved The Vanishing Half so much.

Mutiple perspectives, especially over multiple generations is one of my favorite things in fiction, and I got that in this novel.

We follow two twin sisters, inseparable as children but as they grow older choose very diffrent paths. One living in a black world, the other in a white world. We get to see how they have to deal with that choise and also how it impacts their daughters lives.

I wanted to keep on reading to learn more about the sisters, learn about why they made their decisions and how impacted their daughters. Couldn't put it down.