Grown Book Review

Enchanted is dazzled by Korey’s luxurious life but soon her dream turns into a nightmare. Behind Korey’s charm and star power hides a dark side, one that wants to control her every move, with rage and consequences. Except now he’s dead and the police are at the door. Who killed Korey Fields?

All signs point to Enchanted.

• One of the most powerful and impactful stories I’ve read
• Hits on some very difficult topics, extreme situations, and societal issues of not trusting victimized women
• Characters feel like real people
• Thought-provoking on many levels and a perspective we all need to see
• Full of taut suspense that makes you not want to put it down, though I wouldn’t call it a thriller

This book really punched me in the gut and squeezed my heart. Grown is an incredibly realistic, scary, suspenseful, heart-breaking story of a young girl who gets caught up in new love and the possibility of living her dreams and ends up in a terrifying, abusive situation. It’s one of those things that feels unfathomable, but when you read it laid out and developed as well as Jackson does in Grown, you see how easily it could happen to anyone.

The story jumps between present day and flashbacks. In present day, we see main character, Enchanted, grapple with not only the death of R&B star Korey Fields, but the accusations that she killed him.  In the flashbacks, we read everything that led up to that moment. This device of back and forth actually worked extremely well because knowing what happened doubled the suspense in the flashbacks, like I was waiting with baited breath for what I knew would happen.

The opening chapter drew me in right away. I immediately got a sense of both the fear of the situation, and Enchanted’s delusional reasoning to cope with the extreme stress.  Throughout the book, I was amazing at Jackson’s skill of crafting Enchanted as a character. As the reader, I felt like I was inside Enchanted’s head. I could perfectly see how a reasonable, smart girl like Enchanted could get caught up in the sweet talk and empty promises of a predator like Korey. And Jackson displayed expert precision in her slow build of Korey’s predatory behavior towards Enchanted. Yellow flags turn into small red flags, which turned into bigger red flags, which burst into flames eventually. I was so impressed at how Jackson made the red flags obvious to the reader, while at the same time realistically showing how Enchanted missed them. 

What I loved most about Grown is how it opened my eyes to the way society ignores or doesn’t trust the voices of black women. Over and over, both through Enchanted’s interactions with others and the asides thrown in between chapters we see people twist what they hear into something that discredits what Enchanted and other victims say. It’s a sad truth and one people need to be more aware of so we can start changing things. The asides, things like text conversations or police records were an extremely effective tool at pulling back and showing a broader view of this problem. It’s more than just something that happened to one girl. It’s a societal problem.

I don’t have many criticisms of this book. It was all written beautifully and crafted well. However, some aspects could have been developed a little more for my taste. For instance, I was confused throughout about the roles of some of the side characters, and I don’t recall them ever being ironed out. And there was one strange addition towards the end where I didn’t see how it added to the story overall, other than to try to force additional conflict that I didn’t think was necessary. Plus, from my perspective, it turned Enchanted into an unreliable narrator, which ran the risk of undermining the message the author was trying to portray about trusting young black women in these situations.

In additional, the end of it seemed to fall apart a bit. Like all of a sudden we’re at the end and the author hoped it still had suspense so she threw in some weird things. And while some places might label it as a thriller, I don’t think there was ENOUGH suspense for that categorization. There was a lot of suspense, but the necessary work Jackson did to convey the desperation in Enchanted’s situation created quite a few non-suspenseful moments. But I wouldn’t dock points for this because I don’t think the story needed to feel like a thriller to be engaging to read. I just don’t want people to expect a thriller, especially after reading the synopsis, when I wouldn’t call it that.