Title: Black Girl Unlimited
Author: Echo Brown
Publication Date: January 14, 2020
Publisher: Holt/Ottaviano
Format: Paperback ARC
(Many thanks to Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight for sending me this)

My first thought when I read this book was: black wizards? About dang time!

Because like many other people, I grew up reading Harry Potter, and there wasn’t a whole lot of black wizards really going on there. The fact that this was an issues book set in Chicago also piqued my interest, because while I’m not a fan of issues books in general, the combination of that and fantasy seemed unique enough.

Black Girl Unlimited is an #ownvoices, semi-autobiographical book about a young girl trying desperately not to let her circumstances drag her down, as she reminds others that there’s magic yet in the world.

While I did end up enjoying this, and I think its message was important, I also can’t help but feel a little lied to. The story is magical realism, at its best, but what I thought I was getting from the blurb was some sort of actual urban fantasy.

TW: Rape, incest, child abuse, drugs, heavy cursing, racism, death

❧ This is an #ownvoices story that felt like it needed to be told, because it touches on so many important issues facing the black community.

This is a dark book with some really hard and brutal insights about struggles people still face today in America. If you’ve never been exposed to black inner city culture, this could even be a very eye-opening experience. Life is hard. The journey through this book is going to be hard. Suck it up, buttercup.

There were definitely times this book made me feel uncomfortable (how could it not?!) and time and time again, I was reminded of how lucky I am for where and how I grew up, while acknowledging that not everyone has that privilege.

Echo is trying to make a better life for herself, but it feels like the cards have been stacked against her from the very beginning. There’s a lot of heart in this story and perseverance and overcoming and discovery. But that also means she gets knocked down a lot.

❧ There are lessons Echo learns throughout the story, lessons of wizard training that directly translate to learning how to grow up healthy, happy, and prosperous. The lessons were beautiful, and were discovered one by one as the story progresses.

I thought this was so effective, and the paragraphs where the lesson was revealed were always beautifully written. They could almost be condensed down to a few sentences and framed on the wall, they were so lovely.

In this regard, the allegory of the wizard works delightfully, and I think it’s very effective in the telling of Echo’s story. I just wish this had been changed to be something other than wizards, something contemporary, where Echo still could progress through the lessons.

It transforms the perseverance and determination of people into pure magic, as it should be. It’s such a powerful allegory that I wish the marketing hadn’t pushed the wizard aspect. If there’s one thing you can take away from this review, it’s don’t go in expecting the wizards to be anything more than an allegory, and you’ll probably enjoy this book so much more.

❧ Even though my upbringing was nothing like Echo’s, there were plenty of things I could relate to about her story.

They weren’t all good, like trying to find your way in a white man’s world as a little black girl. That hopeless, desperate feeling of wanting to be someone else, someone who would be more accepted by society, while knowing you can’t change how you’re born. So many of these struggles just hit home and hurt my heart. But in a good way?

I also couldn’t help but admire Echo, and there were so many great life lessons to be learned from her.

As I’ve said, reading her story was hard at times, but her arc is absolutely beautiful. There’s so much strength and resilience and determination in her character, despite her adversities.

❧ The writing style was lovely and easy to follow.

I mean, once you got used to the dialect, of course, because yes, the characters speak with a very heavy dialect, and it takes some time getting used to. It was very jarring at first. But the rest of the prose was easy to get into. It sucked me right in, and there were some really lovely passages.

❧ The wizards in this are a lie. Or, more accurately, an allegory.

I kind of wish they had stayed strictly that way, and it became an extended metaphor, if the wizards absolutely had to be a thing, but here we are. If you came for the witches, expecting something along the lines of Harry Potter or any sort of spellcasting, this ain’t that kind of book. You’ll be sorely disappointed (and if I’m honest, I was a little, too). 

I feel like the marketing sort of shot itself in the foot here, because if you’re coming in as a fantasy reader looking for a fantasy #ownvoices story … this ain’t it.

The writing style, tropes, and everything about the plot screams contemporary literary with magical realism. Which is not the same. In the end, I didn’t feel like making the characters wizards added anything to the story, and it actually detracted from the impact of the characters and plot for me. The wizardry was the only fantasy aspect, and it was really just an allegory for women who had trauma they had to overcome, which was beautiful, but not what I expected going in.

❧ The story jumps back and forward in time, and it makes it very hard to follow. Not to mention, I spent half the time trying to figure out just how old Echo is at any given point in the story.

A straight timeline this is not. It’s got more twists and turns than a ball of yarn. There were large time skips and flashbacks in random places. I found myself often trying to figure out when in the timeline something is happening, which made the story hard to follow.

The author also used a technique where in the middle of a scene, two scenes would be knitted together, and the past and present sort of merged. Part of me liked the effect of how the two blended together, where the sentences begin in the present and are finished by the flashback. I thought it was an interesting effect. However, it was so freaking hard to follow. Not to mention that a lot of times, the flashes don’t seem to actually have anything to do with what’s happening in the present, which made them feel so random.

❧ I didn’t really connect to any of the characters other than Echo.

Which is a shame, because there were a lot of other characters, so even though this is Echo’s story, I was hoping to feel a bit more for the others who play a part in her life. And I just … didn’t. I mean, I’m not an emotionless monster. Allegedly. I empathized with their situations and what they were going through, but I never really connected with them.

❧ I know this is a personal preference, but the N-word makes me uncomfortable (regardless of who says it), but I can tolerate it in small doses. That being said, it felt like it was everywhere in this book.

On the one hand, this is realistic, and so I’m not knocking the author or the book for this (and it doesn’t impact my rating). It’s just a friendly heads up. A few uses here and there, especially in historical fiction, doesn’t bother me, but it was pretty pervasive here. Just throwing that out there, in case that’s a hard pass for someone.

❧ I was kind of disappointed with the ending. It felt like I sat through 300 pages for no real payoff.

Sure, yeah, it ended on a satisfactory note, but I finished the last word on the last page and went … and? There was no summing end, no big conclusion to Echo’s story. I suppose this may be a byproduct of the fact that it’s semi-autobiographical and this wasn’t the end of the author’s story. But at the end of the book, I expected something just … more.

When you hear wizards, what would you expect magic-wise? What sort of magic power would you want if you were a wizard?

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