An American Marriage by Tayari Jones REVIEW

 An American Marriage

by Tayari Jones

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

Synopsis:

Newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is artist on the brink of an exciting career. They are settling into the routine of their life together, when they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a deeply insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward- with hope and pain- into the future.

Review:

First, I'm going to say I had no interest in reading this book. However, I needed to fill the prompt "A book that has won the Women's Prize for Fiction" for the 2021 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge and this one just so happened to be available on Libby. Now I say thank you POPSUGAR and thank you Libby! An American Marriage is absolutely beautifully written and engaging. Once I started it I had to continue until I was finished. 

Jones did an amazing job at capturing the various emotions of the main characters. Their relationships were so complex and intertwined. I loved the way the characters were brought to life with dramatic human nature with their decisions and consequences that followed. I can't say I liked or disliked any of the characters, but I felt for all of them. It was difficult to distinguish who was right and who was wrong because of the tangled web of their lives.

The story itself was really interesting. We follow Roy and Celestial through their lives together. We see them fall in love, get married, deal with his imprisonment and finally with the destruction of their marriage. The flow of the story was absolutely perfect, it was like a movie for my mind. It all played out so well. I just loved this one so much. I highly recommend it.