I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Celestial Blue Skies by Maggie Collins
In Belle Place, Louisiana, where the sugarcane grows a mile high to the bright blue sky, Celeste struggles with her mentally ill mother, Tut, and works with her grandmother Maymay to hold the Creole Bastille family together. Celeste has bigger dreams for her life, and is falling for the handsome and wealthy Vashan. But, when Tut runs away to live with the man she met working in the sugarcane to escape her reputation as the town whore, Maymay fears that Celeste will end up like her mother. And just as things are finally looking up for Tut, her past returns with violent, tragic results. Will Celeste end up like her mother, or will she redeem her family from the hoodoo curse that haunts them? And will she find love with someone from a culture just as exotic as her own?
Belle Place, Louisiana, Fifteen-year-old Celeste lives with her Creole grandmother Maymay, her mentally unstable mother Tut, and her three younger siblings and a few other relatives who lives where the sugarcane grows, and the men work the fields. Celeste’s mama Tut, is known as the town whore. It is believed that Tut does not even know who each of her children’s fathers are. Or so everyone thinks. Tut is a free spirit but just with a bad reputation. Tut has big dreams and wants more than anything to leave Belle Place. So when Tut meets a new man from out-of-town working the fields, he is taken by her beauty and her childlike ways and wants to take her away and help some of her dreams come true. But are things too good to be true?
Celeste is the oldest of her siblings. She never talks back; she does what she is told, loves to read, and has excellent marks in school. Her grandmother Maymay wants so much for Celeste to grown up and be something, so she can make them all proud. Celeste has dreams of her own but the one thing she decides she wants to do with her life is follow in her family lineage and does the same thing her grandfather did. Does Celeste have the same kind of gift her grandfather and mother have?
Celestial Blue Skies by Maggie Shivers was a good read, for the most part. It is a bit difficult to get past the Creole language throughout the book, and the fact that a different character tells their views of what is happening in the story. The problem with this is that all the characters did not have a unique voice of their own. They all sounded pretty much the same. So it took a few times to go back to the particular chapter you may be on to be reminded who the character talking at the moment is. At times, the Creole grandmother has some colorful language and views of things in Belle Place that will have you raise your eyebrow like seriously?! The timeframe of the story is not clear, nor how much times passes in between certain scenes. The one main issue I had was one particular character telling her part of the story, when it should have been a different character telling that part of the story. Overall, the storyline was interesting, and I believe with a good developmental editor this could have rated higher.
Reviewed by: Leona
