Who Asked You?

Genre: Fiction

I gave this book ****

This is the story of Betty Jean (or BJ), an African-American woman, a mother, grandmother, friend and wife. She works at a hotel and is near retirement age. The story is told from the alternating perspective of BJ, her two sisters, her daughter, two sons, two grandsons, a nurse who cares for her husband (who suffers from dementia and Alzheimer’s) and her best friend. The story begins when BJ is forced to care for her two young grandsons when her drug-addicted daughter leaves them to move to Georgia with her new husband. At the same time, BJ is also the care giver for her ill husband. One of her sons lives on the other of the side of the country and will not help her, while the other is in jail for trying to car-jack a woman in a parking lot. One of her sisters married a wealthy man and is tremendously judgmental of BJ’s life and lack of education, and the other is raising a son on her own and is the epitome of a helicopter parent. One of BJ’s grandsons is a gifted boy who ends up exceling at school, while the other grandson is developmentally delayed as his mother was on drugs while pregnant with him. This is the story of what happens to this family and the trials and tribulations of a grandmother raising her grandchildren, getting to know her adult children and finding out that life doesn’t always end up the way you think it should.

This book made me giddy and I didn’t want it to end. McMillan is masterful at character development. Her characters are so believable and real that you root for them to succeed and hope for others to fail. They are everyone’s mother, grandmother, sister, friend. The ending is a storybook ending and a little too predictable and perfect, but by the time you get to the end you are rooting for BJ so much, that you can’t help but overlook the too-perfect ending. There are parts of the story that are raunchy (the nurse) and there is a lot of profanity, but it all just fits in with who the characters are and the authenticity of the story. At the heart of it all is family drama and learning to find your own way through the opinions, personalities and experiences of others in order to find your own truth. What a fun read!