Description
What’s more important? Knowing the truth or keeping the peace?
Seventeen-year-old Avery Anderson is convinced her senior year is ruined when she's uprooted from her life in DC and forced into the hostile home of her terminally ill grandmother, Mama Letty. The tension between Avery’s mom and Mama Letty makes for a frosty arrival and unearths past drama they refuse to talk about. Every time Avery tries to look deeper, she’s turned away, leaving her desperate to learn the secrets that split her family in two.
While tempers flare in her avoidant family, Avery finds friendship in unexpected places: in Simone Cole, her captivating next-door neighbor, and Jade Oliver, daughter of the town’s most prominent family—whose mother’s murder remains unsolved.
As the three girls grow closer—Avery and Simone’s friendship blossoming into romance—the sharp-edged opinions of their small southern town begin to hint at something insidious underneath. The racist history of Bardell, Georgia is rooted in Avery’s family in ways she can’t even imagine. With Mama Letty's health dwindling every day, Avery must decide if digging for the truth is worth toppling the delicate relationships she's built in Bardell—or if some things are better left buried.
Deondre Lynch @dbaumbach_516
January 24, 2023
5
We Deserve Monuments is my book of the year. Officially in all time top 5. I haven’t felt this way about a book since I read Felix Ever After. From the first chapter, the characters began shoving their way right off the page and I was hooked. First person is the primary POV of the majority of YA books but so rarely do I immediately feel like the narrator could be so be real and sitting right in front of me telling me their story. Avery was flesh and bone, captured in ink. I smiled. I cried. This book was everything. I love it. All of the stars to this book.