Brief Description
Love and Death are frenemies that place bets on humans by picking two souls and have them make the decision of choosing love or death in a certain time frame. Love wins if the couple chooses to love each other despite whatever difficult circumstances they’re in. Death wins if they choose not to love each other which results in one or both deaths of the two souls. The story takes place around the 1940s, love have chosen a white boy adopted into a wealthy family and death has chosen a black female who has lost both her parents and lives with her grandmother. By Love and Death they meet and the clock starts ticking towards their decision.
What i love about this book is that it has amazing and relatable characters (black girl = me). The time setting and the love between flora and henry was matched and written very well. I also love that love and death though are competing against each other are compassionate towards each other. Theres evidently no ‘hate” between them. Their relationship shows that not every relationship is either a love or hate one. That it can be very conflicting and often times thats not shown in YA.
It was very diverse not just in terms of the two main characters’ race but also in supporting characters as Henry’s handsome yet kind of troublesome best friend who he lives with is gay and the book also identifies his struggle in this time period. Also there is the diversity of different kinds of households and living environment between Henry and Flora.
I felt like it was very insta-love on Henry’s side. Their souls are drawn to each other but i’ve realized when reading books with interracial relationships with black females and white males that it is often the white male that is the first to identify this connection as love and the black female is the first to disregard it? It doesn’t bother me that much because i know its the time period in which the book takes place in but its something i’ve noticed and didn’t really understand.
Close to the ending i felt it being a little rush as Henry and Flora believed the situation they’re in too quickly. I didn’t understand how they could believe Love and Death have personified themselves into humans and placed bets on them. It definitely took out the realism from out this book and that disappointed me.
I usually never read books taken place in the 1900s but i did enjoy this and it was fantastic.
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