Book Review: Before We Were Yours


My Rating: 5

It has been about a month since I finished this book and it honestly took me that long to recover enough in order to write a review.

Before We Were Yours is one of the best books I have ever read, and if you know me at all, you would realize I don’t toss that statement around lightly. By saying that, however, in no way am I saying that this is a happy read, because it is also one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful books I have ever read in my life, as well.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals (although the main characters are fictional), the story is that of Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, who would kidnap poor children and then sell them to wealthy families all over the country from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four siblings are the victims of this type of crime, and half of the book is their journey and fight to get back home. The other half is that of present-day Avery, a prosecutor born into a wealthy family in South Carolina who has a chance encounter which sparks her to look into her own family’s hidden history. The book goes back and forth between these two characters, feeling almost suspenseful as you try to figure out the connection as well as what will happen to the Foss children.

Overall, this book will make you angry, sad, happy, worried, intrigued, and delighted, but most of all, it will make you want to read it over and over again. The author does an amazing job of making you feel like you are there with the characters, and your heart will break and soar for them. If you only read one book in 2018, make it this one it, you will never be able to forget the story that follows.


-Busy Brunette

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