Title: Glory Bishop
Author: Deborah L. King
Genre: Adult Contemporary Fiction
Format: eARC
Length: 342 pages
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Publish Date: June 4, 2019
Setting: Chicago, IL

Domestic Abuse, Underage Sex, Underage Drinking, Teenage Pregnancy

Black

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to BookSirens and Red Adept Publishing for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

I’ve been having a hard time coming to terms with this novel and figuring out what to say about this one because I was very, very upset with it. This isn’t to say that this was a bad novel or anything, nor saying that King doesn’t have a good writing voice. She does, and I thought her writing voice was perfectly fine. It felt like … honestly I don’t even remember what I was going to say here.

I know that my main hesitancy for writing this review was because of how strongly I felt against the abuse that Glory went through at the hands of her mother, all under the guise of being a God-Fearing woman. I absolutely HATE when people will use their religion as an excuse or the catalyst for mistreating people, even their family members. Especially their family members. There’s a scene in this novel where Glory comes home after being out with TJ all night – up into the wee hours of the morning honestly, and yes I get that her mother was “worried” but the way that she treated Glory when she got home was absolutely terrible. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Glory didn’t want to come home at all, especially since she knew that something like that was going to happen.

And the one thing that I hate about families like this is that people don’t want to tell someone about what’s happening because people won’t believe them. Yes, I may be specifically talking about most black families at this point right now, which sucks because it really shouldn’t be that way but I’ve seen it in action, and I’ve been on the receiving end of not being believed because “you don’t say that about family” or whatever else kind of excuse people want to say about stuff like abuse.

I think that’s all I can really say about that subject, especially since I don’t want this review to trigger anyone with my rant.

I get that this was what Glory needed to save herself from, and I get that there was so much more to Glory’s life that she needed to address and learn how to deal with. I just hate that the abuse from her mom was one of them. I can’t even imagine having that on top of everything else.

I was upset with Glory too and some of her decisions, especially when it came to TJ and even that other dude who’s name is escaping me right now. But I can’t blame her for her decisions. That’s all she knew and that’s all she had to really to go off of. What other decisions would she make, honestly? It was just really hard to deal with honestly, and I don’t know if I would have been able to get through this novel on my own, meaning I don’t know if I would have picked up this novel on a regular case. That’s just me, and I’m not saying that some people won’t like this book. I actually found that this book was written really well, like I mentioned above. I just felt like the content for this novel was a little too much for me at the time and it really affected my thoughts on the book.