Review of Deceptive Calm

[Jesse Brown 3]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Deceptive Calm" by Patricia Skipper.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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Deceptive Calm was a very enjoyable and powerful read. As someone born in 1983, I didn’t grow up in the world in this story. I’ve only read about it in history books. Experiencing it through the eyes of these characters (that felt like friends) made it feel personal, and at times emotionally difficult to read.

As a Caucasian myself, it was hard to read certain scenes, especially those involving violence toward Black people and the use of offensive language, including the n-word. While I understand these elements reflect the ugly realities of our history, they were still painful to read, especially because I grew to care about the characters so much.

Sister Rosalie was one of my favorite characters. She was funny, loving, strong, memorable, and just full of heart. The author did a wonderful job of building the characters into likable and sometimes dislikable characters.

I didn’t notice any grammatical or spelling errors in the book, which I usually catch, so I appreciated the clean editing and smooth writing style.

The story did slow down for me during the college years, and I found some of the historical context hard to follow at times. That said, the emotional depth and humanity of the story more than made up for it, so I’m glad I didn’t give up on reading it.

Overall, Deceptive Calm was a meaningful and impactful read. It challenged me, moved me, and reminded me of how important it is to reflect on the past so we can better understand the present. This is a story that I would love to see made into a movie. There’s just enough of several genres: love story, action and history to make this a movie many different people would enjoy seeing.

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Deceptive Calm
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