Redwood Court is the debut novel of DéLana R. A. Dameron and is a richly and beautifully written coming of age/generational saga focussed on a Southern Black family. Mainly told from the view of the youngest daughter Mika in the 1990's it also flashes back to her grandparents and parents earlier days.

As Mika is cared for by various family members and spends a lot of her time at her grandparents' home in the cul-de-sac Redwood Court she gets to hear their stories and witness the flow of their lives. This is a black family living within a community they have helped to cultivate while trying to live the American Dream.

I really enjoyed the love and connections between the family members. I thought the way the author wrote about the racism they experienced, the struggle to make ends meet and the threat of gangs let the underlying anger gently off the page. It did however suffer a little from being a bit too character dependant with not quite enough of a plot to pull that off.

Still an easy to read family saga and very enjoyable.

It’s easy to see why Reese Witherspoon chose Redwood Court as one of her book club titles. It’s a truly wonderful collection of moments in a family’s lives. The characters are vividly drawn, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the story is more about the familial connections and the coming of age of the younger generation, than about plot. Perfect or fans of Jacqueline Woodson’s ‘Red at the Bone’.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for this review copy.

The synopsis of this book sounded so beautiful, and like something that I would absolutely devour and enjoy. Although I found the book really beautifully written, the prose is gorgeous, it ended up taking me a long time to get into and it is really slow and difficult to follow at times because of the pacing. However, once I did eventually start to connect with the story and the characters, I found the book quite moving. Overall I would say that the writing is stunning, but the plot was not as strong as it potentially could have been.

A beautiful, quiet coming of age story.

We follow three generations of a black family, starting with essentially the move of the primary narrator, Mika’s grandparents, into Redwood Court after the Korean War. We move into the meet story and love saga of Mika’s grandparents, the struggles of her parents, the challenges of her uncle.

A slow burn, but worth persevering with and once the narrator became fixed with Mika, it was for me a much easier, flowing read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Swift Press for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.