Book Review: Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne

Title: Chlorine Sky

Author: Mahogany L. Browne

Genre: YA Realistic Fiction/Books in Verse

Number of Pages: 180

Rating: C+

Recommended?: No

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Sky is a young African-American girl with low self-esteem, who is constantly overshadowed by her best friend Lay Li. The only time Sky feels truly empowered is when she’s on the basketball court, her escape for when her relationship with Lay Li gets rocky and Lay Li lets her boyfriend belittle her. Chlorine Sky is a character-driven book in verse about Sky’s coming of age as she struggles to find her voice and survive in a world that doesn’t always encourage or accept her.

The strongest part of this book was Sky’s character. She seemed like she could be a real person and she was a flawed but appealingly down-to-earth protagonist who was easy to root for. The main problem was how confusing the writing is. It’s written in a slang-y, deliberately ungrammatical way and half the time I didn’t know where the scene was taking place and what was happening. The way the book was written made Sky’s character arc feel very disjointed, and it made me feel distanced from the material. I feel like I would have connected with the story more if the book had been written a different way.