Review: The Wedding by Dorothy West

Funny story. I once joined a book club about 8 or 9 years ago in the hopes of bettering myself. But in all honesty, back then, reading hadn’t become my thing yet. The first book club pick was The Wedding by Dorothy West. I had read about 30 pages of it, but like I said, reading just wasn’t my thing.

Rewind 8 or 9 years later and I had just completed the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy by Kevin Kwan and I was hungry for more. I decided to do a Google search of similar books and The Wedding came up on several articles so I decided to give the book a second shot. I was fortunate enough to run across a couple of other bookstagrammers that happened to want to read the book too (Hi @SubwayReads and @hayinas7) and we decided to buddy read it together! Books are always better when shared with buddies.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed this one. A lot of focus on skin color in this book and the hierarchy of family members simply based on the color of their skin. It’s relatable to the world today. One of the things I loved most was how the story followed different characters and the stories some how intertwined and connected each of these people. There’s a family tree in the beginning that I had to refer to several times to keep my people straight in my mind. It was kind of fascinating. Overall I rated this one 4 stars. The ending was completely unexpected. So glad I picked this one back up.

“When I pinch myself, I don’t feel colored. I just feel the hurt of it- maybe that’s what being colored means for most of us. You feel the hurt of it.”