This wonderful writing brings you right to the heart of Queens. You feel part of the novel. While we experience these tees growing up their perspectives are specific to their upbringings as brown, immigrant girls growing up in Queens. I really enjoyed it.

This felt fresh and new. Likeable leading characters with interesting stories to share.
One to recommend to others.
4 stars.

A fast-paced, fabulous read detailing the lives of a group of girls from Queens. We follow their journey from childhood, becoming adults and finally, the gruelling undertaking of being the adult of your own life, balancing the pressures of life, society and love. The author does an excellent job of describing moments and places with bursts of colours or descriptions of smells. Throughout the book, you feel like you, too, are on their street and living your life right alongside them.

This one was a lovely read. I really enjoyed reading this one. I just love this kind of books.
4 stars read for me

I really enjoy the poetry-prose narration of this book. I love the rhythm of the words how the story gets constructed and how we see Brown Girls lives walking side by side, living they way they are taught, the way they choose, the way society moulds them to. I found the stories very relatable, though I’m not from US I felt somehow a little closer to those particular stories of girls just growing up owning their lives. I particularly like that we follow them through out a whole life time, not just a short period of time, but the whole entire life.

It was a very interesting concept and quite risky to write it in first person plural (we) as it took me a long time to get use to it. Sometimes it got a bit annoying as I felt like it wasn’t necessary and it was easy to get diverted and distracted.

One very interesting part is that when ever white people are mention you get the sense of envy or jealousy that Brown Girls feel, as they are always set aside from the rest of the white people in the States, they get stereotyped and always put under harsher scrutiny. It really saddened me. Because i wish the world was a better place for every one.

Daphne has such a unique writing style that felt so authentic and moving. I felt like i was so immersed within its pages and characters. I really enjoyed this and cant wait to read more from her.

Brown Girls is a stream of consciousness novella which takes you on a first person view ride with a group of girls from Queens as they navigate childhood, young adulthood and finally adulthood balancing all of the societal, economical and modern pressures. Flashes of colour describe clothes, the summer trees, skin and eyes. Smells transport you to city streets where hot dogs sizzle in the heat and the rubbish of NYC rests on the sidewalk.

This picture is broad strokes but somehow so beautifully, painfully defined. The girls from the ‘wrong part’ of New York City spend their childhoods trying to get out, and their adulthoods trying to fit back in from their lawyer/marketing/executive careers. While their brothers, cousins and boyfriends have dead end drug dealer/runner jobs and ricochet between prison and suicide.

Told in short chapters, the stories are devastating. The time the girls try on clothes in a shop only to be told to leave and have the security team called on them. Juxtaposed with stealing eyeliner as they can’t afford it but need it to fit in, to feel part of the neighbourhood.

Reminiscent of Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, Assembly by Natasha Brown and The Other Black Girl - this is a love letter to Queens in the best way possible. Recognising the downsides with affection, reliving the memories and the friends made and lost. Andreades is from Queens herself and it is thus easy to see that this is part debut novel, part memoir.

Poetically told, the words wash over you like waves from the sea, sometime stinging with hidden jellyfish as teachers mix up brown girls because they can’t be bothered to look properly, white people assume the brown girls who are guests in their houses are the help and some brown girls just can’t bear to live in this world anymore. I’m excited to se what this author does next.

Thanks to Netgalley and to 4th Estate for the DRC, as always! This is available to buy now.

I loved this book - it's prose but almost read like poetry in places. It follows a group of brown girls throughout their lives in New York. Society treats all of these girls the same even though they hail from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, the Caribbean. The author uses this 'group' to talk about individuals but also about society in general, covering childhood, schooling, friendships, relationships, death, culture and even touches on the pandemic.

I absolutely loved this book which centres around the lives of a group of black women who grew up together in Queens, New York.

Told in a colloquial, conversational and poetic style, Andreades plays with the format of the novel and pushes the boundaries of what a novel can do. Although this is a fictional work, I got the sense that Andreades words were informed by real life experiences. I am a black woman of Ghanaian ethnic origin living in England in the diaspora. Ostensibly my experience is different from that of a black woman living in New York and yet I related to so many of the observations and microagressions detailed in this book. It made me realise that so many of my experiences as a black woman are shared by brown girls around the world and there was a real sense of solidarity that came from reading Andreades' words.

This novel is for all the brown girls looking for a space where they can feel seen, where the thoughts they have dared not speak aloud are put to paper and validated. I loved it and can't wait to see what this writer does next.

Daphne Palasi Andreades’ debut novel details the collective life of brown girls who have grown up in the ‘dregs of Queens’. Chronological separated into five parts,
‘Brown Girls’ is a powerfully poetic book that tells the story of shared experiences, racism and prejudice.
As the reader, we are invited into the ins and outs of their lives and most inner thoughts. At times I found it hard to distinguish between characters due to the strong collective feel of the book, I would have enjoyed more in-depth exploration of singular characters. Saying that, the sharing of experience really makes this book so powerful so the collectiveness isn’t inherently a negative.

The formatting of the book makes it an easy ready, each chapter very short and reads like a poetically beautiful essay. Paired with the powerful and important message, I definitely enjoyed this book (I read it in an afternoon, that’s unusual for me so says a lot!)

Thank you to Random House for kindly giving me a copy of this book to read via Net Galley.

It took me a while to understand what the author was doing with the style of the book, but when I did I got drawn into the interwoven stories. An unusual novel, but a beautiful one.

Brown Girls

Thanks to Netgalley and 4th Estate for the ARC.

It’s beautifully written, and tells the stories of several women of colour. It’s primarily set in New York, and depicts their lives as they grow up together from school, through adolescence and into childhood.

It weaves in several topics, including school, finding your career path, family, race, heritage, student life, first loves, building their identities, dating, loss, navigating the world, the pandemic, and much more.

As a woman of Nigerian heritage, despite growing up in the UK I found it hugely relatable and loved reading it. One of the best books I’ve read in ages - reminded me a lot of Girl, Woman, Other.

I really enjoyed this energetic, witty and thoughtful debut. Told in the first person plural and covering the entire life span of both a particular set of ‘brown girls’ and of all of them, it manages to very economically convey complex topics around representation, economic migration, social mobility and belonging and the short chapters make it a propulsive read. Highly recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I loved this.

Written in the first person plural , this novel is narrated by the Brown Girls of the title. They grow up in Queens, NYC. They sing at the top of the voices. The go to school. They drink. They listen to their migrant family stories , they balance their American life with their family backgrounds. They see members of their extended family come to their homes, they stay a while and move on to chase their own American dream. The Brown Girls friendships are strong. They flirt with boys. They promise to be friends forever. They grow up. Some go to college and move into big cities, some stay in Queens and their collective voice catalogues this journey from girlhood to women hood against a backdrop of race, sexism, class in today's America.

It took a couple of pages to get used to the first plural voice of this story , then this book enraptured me. I read it one sitting. It is like nothing I have read before. So beautifully written, with short vibrant chapters and words that dance on the page.

The descriptions of Queens are so colourful and detailed, I was transported there when reading. Their experiences of being a teenager were achingly familiar at times , the music referenced, the awkwardness and ambition catalogued in bittersweet exquisite detail. Then there was so much that was so unfamiliar to me and these characters gave me a glimpse at a world of marginalisation of which I never have or never will experience.

I could go on and on about how beautifully this book is written, instead, I recommend you read it. As soon as finished this digital copy I bought a paper copy. One I will reread and push on other people.

Beautiful. Visceral. Original. An ambitious brilliant debut that captivated me.

I am looking forward to whatever Daphne Palasi Andreadas writes next.

4.5- 5

I adored this beautiful book. Daphne Palasi Andreades so deftly captures both universal experiences of girlhood and coming of age as well as very specific and niche truths about what it means to grow up as a brown girl in a white man's world. Her writing about growing up brown captured thoughts and ideas I never even knew I had until I saw them written on the page so perfectly that it would sometimes take my breath away. A gorgeous, lyric, experimental but extremely readable novel that I'll be recommending to lots of people.

I was led to this book by lots of people I admire saying how brilliant it is, but when I started it I wasn’t sure, as it completely subverted my expectations of what a novel ‘should’ look like! Within a few pages however, my perspective shifted and I started to see that this, somehow, was the ONLY way to tell this ‘story.’ I am left feeling in awe at the skill it took to write a hugely important, engaging book in a completely new way.

Featuring a collective of girls as they grow up in Queens, NY, Brown Girls is a (mostly) chronological collection of short snapshots of their lives through the years focusing on love, identity, marginalisation and family.
It's undeniable that this is a beautifully written book - I found it compelling and enjoyable overall - however the overarching downside of this book for me is that it definitely tried to be far too much all at once, and I did find myself losing interest towards the end.

If you like the themes of the book and enjoy poetic, plot-light novels, this is one for you.

Thanks to Netgalley and the published for an ARC.

This is a very different book - more of a poem, an ode to the trials and tribulations, joys and disappointments of a group of women from Queens. There are no real key characters - it is the group as a whole describing their childhood, adolescence, adulthood and finally, deaths. There is an examination of their relationships with friends, lovers, husbands and mothers as well as their changing feelings towards Queens itself.

It is brief which suited me fine, long enough to relish the writing style but short enough not to drive me mad with the repetition or lack of plot. It does need to be read fast so I would recommend to avid readers, but not the one book every two months reader.

Have you ever read a book that’s written in the first person plural? Nope, me neither. The whole book is written in this way, so cleverly. What a stunning way for a writer to put together her debut – it’s so technically accomplished as well as authentic-sounding, raw, emotional, real and brilliant. She does not put a foot wrong the whole way through and this is not an easy thing to do.

The Brown Girls of the title are a loose friendship group in Queens, New York (“The dregs of Queens”), starting aged ten around, presumably the turn of the millennium (their mothers are described as having come there in the 1990s from countries across the world) and then presumably stretching into the future, although this is not explicitly described.

We follow them through their lives and into their deaths, the writing becoming more and more lyrical and beautiful as it goes. A real tour de force.

As a brown girl, this book truly spoke to me. Brown Girls is written in a collective voice, chronicling the lives of girls of colour in New York, as they grow into amazing women. Despite growing up in London, it seems there are always shared experiences of 1st and 2nd generation families no matter where they emigrated to, or from. Where an experience didn't speak directly to me, I recognised it from a family member or friend. Brilliantly written and demonstrating that while some experiences may be shared, we are not a monolith.