This audiobook was top tier and I will quite literally listen to anything Jennette narrates! 👌🏻

That being said, this is not for everyone. It is vulgar, blunt, and uncomfortable…but that’s the whole point. It explores what society expects of women starting at a young age, and the lengths a man will go and the morals he will drop for sex…even from a minor (who is also his student).

An overarching theme is overconsumption in all its forms-fast fashion, makeup, and lust. The teenage angst and desire of the main character, Waldo, jumps off the page and slowly evolves into rage and self-discovery. Her observations of her own mother help her learn that there is more to life than just attention from men.

Jennette has quickly become one of my auto-buy authors…and I really hope she keeps narrating her own audiobooks 🤭

While ‘James’ definitely stands on its own two feet, I am soooo glad I read ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ first. The parallels between the two was so much fun to read and dissect. Both tales were remarkably similar and yet, entirely unique.

This was my first Percival Everett book, but it most certainly will not be my last. I loved the Jim to James development throughout the book, especially the last few chapters where we get to see James be his true, fearless self to find and save his family. This novel was filled to the brim with quotes that grabbed my soul and demanded its attention.

“I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.”