Quickie 💭:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Thriller/Crime Fiction
Read: October 8, 2026
A group of friends, brought together by anger and grief, decide to make people answer for racist violence that was never punished. But the deeper they go, the harder its gets to tell where justice ends and revenge begins.
Lemme just say this…👩🏽💻
THIS. WAS. GOOD. AS. HELL.
Loved this one. My chest kinda hurt tho lol.
There was ALOT going on here but what stuck out to me the most was the anger and the grief these characters were carrying and how differently they all handled it.
Nate, Joshua, Isiah, and Rachel could all care about the same issues but have different outlooks on how justice looks. I found myself on the fence a couple times because I could understand why somebody felt the way each of them did but also still thinking things went a little too far.
NATE SURPRISED ME. Ima just keep it at that because I don’t want to spoil it lol
Okay, noted. 📖:
Justice or just making somebody pay?
This was my biggest takeaway.
They started out trying to make people answer for racist violence that was never properly dealt with. So their anger was definitely justified. Their grief makes sense.
The author starts to show how they went from holding people accountable to wanting someone to pay.
How do you hold history accountable when the people who actually committed the crime are gone? Is that justice or making someone pay? In my opinion, the descendants weren’t completely innocent either because some of that ideology had clearly been passed down. They might not have committed the original crime but they carried the same beliefs.
I also loved how the book showed different perspectives within the Black community with the different characters. They could have a common goal without agreeing on how to get there.
Darius was gone but he was the focal point of the story. Everybody had an idea of what Darius would’ve wanted and what he deserved.
Rachel and Nate’s connection stood out to me because sometimes you just want someone to understand your anger. I feel like Nate and Isiah were giving Malcom X vs Martin Luther King energy in the way they approached the change. Same bigger goal, but very different ideas on how to get here.
Final Note 🩷:
Nobody was all right or all wrong in this book.
Jahmal Mayfield did a good job giving these characters different perspectives on race, justice, grief and revenge.
This book definitely makes you think about what it means to get justice and how easily that line can get muddled with revenge.
Please read this one and if you have, let me know what you think! 😊✨
