Review of Kalayla

[Wareesha Asif]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Kalayla" by Jeannie Nicholas.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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11-year-old Kalayla is a free-spirited, adventurous loner, and she has been used to looking after herself since her father died, and her mother Maureen started working full-time to provide for them. Kalayla is okay with this and spends her days exploring her new home and the world around it. But all her lonely wandering worries Lena Barzetti, the landlady of the building that Kalayla and Maureen just moved into, because young Kalayla reminds her so much of her children, who she thinks she has lost.

That’s the main plot of Kalayla: as the story unfolds, Kalayla finds out about a big lie Maureen told her earlier about her maternal family, Maureen regrets her actions and has trouble dealing with her past, and Lena is determined to help them both as compensation for the mistakes she made in her life as a mother.

Jeannie Nicholas has created a beautiful world in Kalayla, filled with beautiful characters who all have beautiful backstories. Every character is well-developed and relatable, and although the pace is slow, the characters' motivation and actions make them likable and move the story forward. The story, written from the viewpoint of the 3 main characters, has depth and meaning to it. Nicholas writes with such a nice flow it's hard to put the book down! In Kalayla, she tackles all the important modern-day problems, including racism, sexual exploitation, family trauma, the hardships of motherhood, etc., with a certain finesse and expertise, and the morals and lessons we learn become part of the plot. Towards the end of the story, the character development comes as a surprise, because when you’re reading, you’re so immersed in the lives of the characters you can’t stop and think about how the characters have matured. It is only when you finish reading do you realize how different they are now as compared to the beginning (especially Kalayla!). This is a technique only expert writers are able to achieve, so Nicholas has accomplished a great feat in the writing of Kalayla.

There were almost no spelling or grammar mistakes, other than, for example, when Nicholas writes 'old lady' in small letters in one place and then capitalizes it (Old Lady) in another. While this mistake does interrupt the book's flow, it does not affect Kalayla's rating. The book was not professionally edited, but well enough, and so deserves a 4 out of 5 stars rating. The plot was perfect, the grammar was good, and the story was very real and authentic, leaving absolutely no plot holes. Kalayla succeeds in bringing light to the importance of the problem of racism in the late 1990s and early 2000s, perfectly depicting the lives of different non-white families living in America then.

This book is a must-read! It's suitable for teens, adults (especially mothers), and lovers of reality/contemporary fiction. Children should avoid it though, at least until they're old enough, because of the occasional use of profane language, but other than that, Kalayla has the potential to be everyone's new favorite book.

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Kalayla
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