Play Book Tag discussion

I am not sure what I thought about this book. The concept was interesting - "a near-future Southern city plagued by fenced-in ghettos and police violence" where people of color are able to get procedures, including a demelanization treatment, to whiten their features. The city is essentially a police state where black people are segregated and persecuted at the whim of the police, in some ways like a darker version of our modern day but in other ways no different. Our unnamed narrator aggressively pursues these treatments for his biracial son which drives the plot. His misguided attempts to protect his son, or bring him greater success in life is heartbreaking and relatable, but ultimately I wasn't invested enough in the characters, or the narrator. One of the difficulties for me was the unreliability of the narrator which impacted the flow and timeline of the book. He takes a drug called plum, which I couldn't quite figure out its real-world equivalent, that causes him to hallucinate and lose time. He would also flashback in time suddenly which was slightly jarring at times and made the timeline confusing.

The writing is good, and there are some great lines in this book.
Some of my favorites were:
"After all, what was equality other than a typographical error in the Constitution?"
"Maybe love was just the larval stage of hate, the comely caterpillar in advance of the hideous butterfly."
Pragmatism before teenage wasteland emotions."

I would recommend the book, but with the caveat that the narrator doesn't seem reliable enough to invest in what is happening. So sometimes when you aren't sure if what is happening is real it has less impact.

A heartbreaking story that I am happy I read, just fell flat in some ways.
My overall feeling was a 3 star, but Ruffin is a talent and his novel deserves another star for beautiful writing and a haunting concept even if the execution wasn't great.