Summary
The Blackwoods. Everyone knows their name. Blossom Blackwood burst onto the silver screen in 1962, and in the decades that followed, she would become one of the most celebrated actors of her time—and the matriarch of Hollywood’s most famous Black family. To her great-granddaughters, Hollis and Ardith, she has always just been Bebe. And when she passes away, it changes everything.
Hollis Blackwood was never interested in fame. Still, she’s surrounded by it, at home with her family and at the prestigious Dupree Academy alongside Los Angeles’s elite. When private photos of Hollis are leaked in the wake of Blossom’s death, she is thrust into the spotlight she’s long avoided—and finds that trust may be a luxury even she can’t afford.
Ardith Blackwood has always lived in the public eye. A television star since childhood, she was perhaps closer with Blossom than anyone—especially after her mother died from a drug overdose. Ever since, she has worked to be everything her family, her church, and the media want her to be. But as a family secret comes to light and the pressures from all sides begin to mount, she wonders what is left beneath the face she shows the world.
Weaving together the narratives of Hollis, Ardith, and Blossom, award-winning author Brandy Colbert tells a boldly original story set in an America where everything is personal, and nothing is private.
From the Junior Library Guild
You’ll enjoy this book if…
- you love a story that portrays teens realistically, while still treating them with respect
- you’re fascinated by stories (even fictional ones) about Hollywood and the life that some of its most famous inhabitants live
- you love to explore the complexities and messiness of (extended) family relationships
What was my reading experience like?
I was interested in the premise of the story (duh that’s why I picked it up in the first place), but I can’t say I was hooked from the very beginning. I actually read the first 50 pages or so and the put it down for a couple of weeks while life was happening. But, there have been other times and other books where I made the time to read them regardless, because I simply had to know what happened next.
The Blackwoods took me a little longer than average to settle into. What did eventually bring me back though, was that seed of needing to know, and of recognizing the kernels of story and character development that were being planted. I wanted to see how they would be watered and grow, and for the most part, I wasn’t disappointed.
At the start of the story, I was kind of concerned about the juggling of both dual timeline and multi-POV storytelling. Either one on its own is a lot. But I love a Brandy Colbert story, and based on the (many) other titles of hers that I’ve read, I was confident that she would handle the challenge. And my continued reading proved me right. Weaving through the different time periods and perspectives was overall pretty enjoyable for me, though the closer I got to the end of the story, the more I found myself wishing I had spent more time with the younger Blackwood protagonists. Which, given the overall structure of the story, makes a ton of sense and speaks to where Colbert had the story end.
Likes & Dislikes
[Spoiler alert] I liked the messiness of the family relationships that the story depicts. For me this is particularly true for the first meetings of the two families. Knowing Brandy Colbert’s other work, I didn’t expect that the initial meeting would be all rainbows and butterflies, but I think it’s still worth mentioning that there’s a lot of space for humans to be humans and to feel what they feel. It would have been inauthentic in a way that would have tarnished the rest of the story if when the two families came together, everything was just rosey. If anything, it would be easy to imagine there’s more conflict between the two sides. With decades (or a lifetime, depending on whose perspective you’re taking) of buried history, there’s a lot of potential for conflict.
The largest part of the story that I struggled with was wanting more from both Hollis and Ardith’s storylines. On the one hand, this is probably a good sign of their stories being compelling and layered enough that I was left wanting more. On the other hand, it emphasizes what is lost when crafting a storyline that sweeps across generations and multiple perspectives. In all that readers gained from Blossom’s storyline, they had to have lost something from somewhere else. Also, there is only one matriarch (obviously) and time had to be split between two of the grandkids. I’m also not sure the solution to the problem was to expand the story, as the pacing could definitely be slowed too much. While I’m very unclear on how to solve the problem (if solve is even the right word), it is the most persistent problem, particularly in the second half of the story.
