Reviewed: “Grounded” by Neta and Dave Jackson

I won this in a FreeReads giveaway here on Goodreads. It sounded like a good story, so I entered. The story is good. A singer on the cusp of making it big on the Christian music scene but realizing she needs more in her life than just her music is an interesting enough premise for the story. It made me keep reading. That and I wanted to make sure she didn’t end up going back to the idiot fiance who dumped her and tried to get her back. If she had, I was throwing the book away.

The reason a good, interesting enough story doesn’t get more than two stars from me is this…

Grace, the main character, is white and Christian. That much is clear, even if her race is only mentioned once. As a reader, though, I felt beat over the head with the races and nationalities of everyone else in the book. The Bentleys, the Jaspers, Sam… never were they mentioned without having “brown skin,” “brown eyes,” “kinky hair”, of just plain “African-American.” It’s not offensive as much as it is annoying that I was constantly told that they were a minority, that a Muslim family lived across the street (although Grace never talks to them), or when Jeff described a man as Jewish by twirling his finger at his temple because he apparently didn’t know the term for side curls.

That all goes with one of the underlying themes of the book (the biggest being “I’m worth the wait” and abstinence) wherein Grace seems to be on a quest to broaden her horizons and decides that collecting friends of different races and, almost but not quite, religions.

It’s… superficial and it could have been so much more.

This book isn’t for me, I don’t think. I’m not the target audience. I’m an agnostic if I have to define myself, and I’d rather not, and I don’t care who has sex with who or when they do it. I’m sure this book is perfect for the target audience, it’s just not for me.

(this is the review I posted on Goodreads)