Chloe

by Vicky Jones, Claire Hackney

Destined for a completely different path in life, twenty-year-old Chloe Bruce's world is shattered after a tragic accident on her father's plantation in Alabama. Suddenly thrust into the limelight, as the new heir to the Bruce family business, she is sent off to university to study and equip herself with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed her father and fill his sizeable shoes.
But not everything in life can be learned from a textbook, as Chloe finds out when she meets Mia and Martin, two black residents of the small, forgotten town only a few miles from her university. Mia's dreams are big, too big the town would say. After witnessing Mia show courage in the face of adversity, Chloe hatches a plan to help Mia realise her dream of opening her own bakery.
Will Chloe and Mia's fortitude change the hearts and minds of a prejudiced town?
Chloe is the prequel to the captivating and heartbreaking novel Meet Me at 10 .

Kindle Edition

Reviews

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in a time when racism was trying to end. A time when we had people being killed so there were able to have the right to just drink out of the same water fountain as white people. This book was a real reminder of that time, and just how far we’ve come, but how far we still have to go. Thank you Vicky Jones and Claire Hackney for this wonderful bo.
Chloe Bruce is leaving home to go to college after the tragic death of her brother. She has to make her parents proud of her, she’s all they have left other than the families business that they co owners of. They live in the south, Alabama, where racism is very visible and most are proud to be apart of the Good ole boys as they call it.
Chloe meets a young black woman selling pies outside of a diner that she’s eating at with a couple of her friends. She makes a purchase from Mia and promised to see her again. When Chloe car trouble that same day, Mia and husband Martin help her out with her car. She meets their son who she offers to help with his math homework. Mia doesn’t see color, she loves everyone and feels that they deserve to be treated equally. She cooks up something that will get people and the diner to buy Mia’a pies. It’s going to take a miracle for the small town to come around.
This is a wonderful book that shows how with the help of one person can help start the change of how white people change their views about people and the color of their skin. How one young white woman wouldn’t give up on her friends. How finishing school and learning how to take care of the family business is her top priority, but is it enough.
With school being over and back home, Chloe is home and when she’s introduced to all of the employees one face stands out to her.
On to book two to find out what happens next.

[Faye Hollidaye · Rating 2 out of 5]

The storyline isn’t bad at all, but the quality of writing reminds me why I stopped reading indie books. It’s a story of racism in the American Deep South in the 1950s, but it’s most obviously written by no one who knew anyone who lived through it. I hate to be so negative in a review, but I have to be honest… Dear authors, when writing a novel set in the dear ol’ U.S. of A., I highly encourage you to hire an American editor — there’s no shame in making your work better when you’ve clearly put so much effort into it. Or, at least, watch the Dukes of Hazzard or the Andy Griffith Show, or read the works of Harper Lee, Mark Twain, JD Salinger, or Z.N. Hurston, or anything that accurately depicts the time and place of your novel.