Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert

Image: Little, Brown and Company

The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~5 hours and 36 minutes. Read by Jeanette Illidge. LBYR/ Hachette Book Group, March, 2020. 9781549157387. (Review of downloadable audiobook borrowed from public library.)

Happy Monday! I hope you had a wonderful weekend filled with books and walks outside. The weather was cold but the sunshine was glorious. Boo and I took lots of long walks. He even got to run loose in the woods for a bit.

Middle Grade Monday features The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert. Ms. Colbert, an award-winning YA author, made her middle grade debut in this winning story of Alberta, who lives with her two dads in a California beach town. They are the only Black people in town and Alberta has gotten used to that thanks to her best friend, Laramie and surfing. Al lives to surf and she's good enough to compete, but her dads say she can't until she's thirteen. Life is pretty good except for her nemesis, Natalie, who lives next door, and whom Laramie seems to be taking a shine to. Just as seventh grade begins, Al learns that the B & B across the street has finally been sold. A Black family will be moving in and there's a girl just Al's age!

Edie and her mom have moved all the way to California from Brooklyn and Edie is not thrilled. She misses her friends, Brooklyn and most of all, her record producer dad. Her goth style, wearing all black, including lipstick, certainly draws attention at school. Can Al and Edie forge a friendship?

This was a fun read about friendship and middle school drama with a side of mystery. While cleaning up the attic, which will be Edie's space, the girls discover a box of diaries from the 1950s and set about reading them.

New-to-me narrator, Jeanette Illidge, sounded appropriately youthful as Alberta and had a distinct range of voices for the varied characters.