The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

Another first novel with high acclaim. In fact, Heidi Durrow's book won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction given for a novel that addresses social justice issues.

When I started reading the book, I was immediately engaged with the main character, a biracial girl whose father was an African-American serviceman and mother was Danish. I usually like characters who are smart, and Rachel certainly is.

However, when it comes to plotting, I ended up not quite being sure about the novel's main idea. Was it about the issues of being biracial? Was it about a family tragedy? Was it about addiction?  The part of the story that was supposed to be, perhaps, suspenseful was not particularly so. And then the end of the book came, wham, at a sudden stop.

With a good editor, this book could have been much better, and hopefully, the author's next book will learn from the problems of this one.