The Pride

The Pride by Faydra D. Fields

Summary: The story follows the lives of four single mothers and their families. The story follows their lives and the lives of their children. Then another element comes into play (I don't want to spoil it), but it seems like it's heading down a precarious road. There isn't much posted yet and the story doesn't seem to be at the point in the summary yet, but to me it sounds interesting.

Likes: The character voices are pretty strong. There are only 12 "pages" posted and each deals with lives of different women and their children. We hear the different stories of each characters and hopefully when there is more posted, we get to see how their lives interweave with each other. The characters have a distinctively ethnic flair to them, you can tell by the colloquialisms and the speech patterns. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked this aspect as I felt it was a bit stereotypical and gimmicky when I first read it. Then I read the phone conversation with Angela and her friend and was immediately hooked by the voice. It comes off as authentic without being stereotypical and irritating like most stories that use a specific speech pattern that is identified as being with a specific group. I enjoyed that aspect and was glad that it wasn't over done. You can tell that something is brewing when you read the story from the other point of view. It takes a little while to get into the story, but the summary seems to promise something good and I'm curious to see how it plays out.

Dislikes: There is a lot of head hopping and it gets a little confusing to keep track of who said what and whose child belongs to who. The kids voices come across as stilted for me, but the story is in it's beginnings stages so there is still time for this to even out. The story is broken up in weird places. It seems to go by page, rather than section.

Overall: If you like stories with a diverse cast with a little ethnic flair, this probably the story for you. I'm not normally a reader of family drama stories, but something about the summary intrigued me. I can't wait to see where the story goes.