𝐒𝐡𝐞’𝐝 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟, 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞. 𝐒𝐡𝐞’𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐲.

Jubilee is Bianca Vogelsang’s baby, who she watches over with fierce devotion and tenderness. She is a good, loving mother to her little one, the only problem is that Jubilee is a doll. When she shows up at her brother’s house in Santa Anna, she is a broken twenty-year-old who was meant to be away at University entering her junior year, writing her own poetry collection. Instead, on this dark night, she has returned, barely a sketch of her former self, bleeding, looking more like the walking dead. Worse, as she stands at the doorstep she has a baby bundled in her arm, as he hugs her, Matty feels she is burning up with a fever. Convincing her to let him hold the baby as he leads her into the sanctuary of his house, he realizes immediately the baby isn’t alive nor even human, it’s a doll. Matty isn’t able to make sense of what is happening, in her weakened state she can’t form the words to answer him, and Matty calls for reinforcement- their mother. Once there she knows they must rush Bianca to the hospital where they discover beyond her wrecked body, her mind has lost it’s grasp. Does she really believe her doll is a real baby?

The novel flashes back to the early days of Bianca “Bee” and high school sweetheart Gabe’s relationship. Moving too fast, getting caught up in bigger secrets, she makes a painful decision for the greater good at fifteen to later be betrayed by him when he leaves for college. With Katrina their story becomes a love triangle, with ties Gabe cannot easily sever and Bee always left waiting in the wings. Gabe knows how to “handle” his women when they act out of line and with her resentment and painful memories of the choices she made, Bee is quick to challenge him. But his touch always soothes the wounds. Still, they stick to each other, despite Gabe’s habit of coming and going as he pleases. When she needs him most after a terrible loss, he is with Katrina, who has everything she had to sacrifice. Things spiral out of control until we get to the bottom of the trauma and the reason someone as intelligent, and gifted as Bianca is now clinging to a baby doll.

In present time: Bianca is living with her brother Matty and his partner Handro, enrolled in college classes and attending therapy sessions entrusting Matty with Jubliee’s care. She has met someone in her Mexican Art History class, Joshua Walker. Joshua knows all too well about hardship having grown up in the foster system, even separated from his sister Olivia. When she got tangled up in the criminal justice system he moved the moon and stars to become the main caregiver to his nephew Jayden, who for all intents and purposes is his son. When he invites Bianca, a gorgeous, articulate, intelligent woman (who can carry on a conversation about Frida Kahlo and surrealism) on a date and into he and Jayden’s structured, safe lives he doesn’t yet know about her delusion. He learns soon enough it isn’t a joke nor a test, familiar with troubled youth and patients exhibiting early signs of psychosis, he is on high alert. First and foremost in his mind is Jayden’s safety, but beyond the doll, she seems so normal, certainly doesn’t appear to be harboring dark thoughts. What has he gotten himself into? Why can’t he walk away? What is this going to mean down the road for his little family of two?

Despite his misgivings, he and Bianca fall in love and just like her family at the advice of Bee’s doctor, allows her to work through her pain by way of Jubilee. But will she ever be able to detach from this crack in reality? What is at the heart of it? What exactly happened between she and Gabe? Joshua and Gabe are polar opposites, what violence occurred to make Gabe so repellant? Is he welcoming ruin into the only stable home Jayden has?

I went between 3 and 4 stars rating this novel, because at times I struggled with the flow of past to present, but it is an important storyline simply for the explosive relationship versus the healing one with Josh. The psychological break that is vital to Bianca coping with a bottomless loss is beautifully explored in this story. As is the fear other’s have when someone exhibits mental illness because most romantic interests would run the other way in terror. The abuses, the returning willingly to a cycle of degradation, how a childhood lacking made the things Gabe could give her so irresistible, blinding her to the uglier side. Then the sacrifice she made, far too naïve to understand the repercussions and pain that would follow. Adults get caught in the same web, having an intimate history with someone makes it hard to break free, it’s far more intensified in a teenager who lacks the experience that comes with maturity. Unlike privileged girls, for Bianca poverty is at the heart of her lack of choices, girls like her face consequences those with means never will. In the beginning, how she is defined and treated by others (Gabe’s family in particular) when the word ‘gringa’ is attributed to her, because her father is white and not Mexican like her mother, exposes another cross she has to bear. Laughter from his family when she mentions being a writer, her dearest dream, and that the true choice, in their minds is wife or career and nothing in between. This isn’t exactly support, especially for a young woman who uses poetry to keep from drowning. Writing, her one salvation.

In the betrayal of trust between she and Gabe, Katrina open fresh hurts with words like daggers about the private shamefulness of Bianca’s decision when she was fifteen, shedding light on how Bee feels about herself and the ways others judge her. As she says, girls like her are ditchwater girls… they must save themselves, and she tries, from that moment on her brother’s doorstep. It will take mountains of courage to recover.

There isn’t much room for innocence, but will she have a chance for a fresh start, a rebirth of sorts? Could Joshua and his sweet, funny son Jayden be a balm?

Publication Date: October 6, 2020

Blackstone Publishing

This was a beautiful masterpiece. It was one of the most truly wonderful and heart wrenching stories I’ve ever read. Was a punch in the gut and I loved every bit of it. I usually have more to say in my reviews but this one left me rather breathless.

What a beautiful and haunting novel! The cliché "could not put this book down" gets thrown around a lot in reviews, but I literally could not put this book down and finished it in less than 24 hours. Do yourself a favor and pick Jubilee up now.

A sad and honest psychological character study about Bianca (Bee) and the doll that she believes is her daughter. The concept of this book was really intriguing, but I do think the execution could have been better. The plot and character development was slowed down significantly by the literary illusions and constant references/quotes, so portions of this book were a little harder for me to get through. However, the finish was very strong so I ended up giving this 4 stars. I loved that this book focused so heavily on Chicano/Mexican-American culture -- and the toxic, dusty Southern California environment plays heavily into the tone of the story. Bee is a character that is easy to get frustrated by, but she is also so innocent and it is heart-warming to see her grow a lot over the course of the novel. I think this is definitely worth picking up, especially if you are interested in family dramas, parental issues, and maternal love. Maybe this is a *spoiler* but I feel it is important to address the trigger warning to readers who may be sensitive to infant loss.

This is going to be one of those books that sticks with me for awhile. The story while interesting in premise and promise dragged in certain parts for me because there was a lot of tell and not show segments, but also because I found myself drawn more to the interactions between certain characters and less so between others. However, even in the segments that didn't draw me in as readily there were moments of beautiful prose. Bianca has a unique and poetic outlook on the world that helps to bolster an almost dreamlike quality to the text. However, I doubt that is what is going to stick with me. What is going to stick with me is a discussion surrounding mental health that could be had with this book. People with mental health aren't any less deserving of love, but it does take a specific person with a whole lot of patience to give them what they need. They need support, space, and time to heal, but then also it's important to remember that you can never 100% know what another person has gone through or is going through. This book is depressing on the surface level, has interesting psychological aspects in the middle, and at its very base is about hope and healing. It's complex and wavers back and forth between being beautiful and being ugly, but ultimately that's life isn't it?

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this novel.

I requested this book mainly because of the fabulous reviews but unfortunately this book failed to engage me. I couldn't connect with the writing style. I didn't feel for the main characters (which was highly required).

"Jubilee" is written in a way that made it hard for me to access the story because I was distracted by the word choices and sentence constructions. For instance, when I read a sentence like this one:

"She pressed her ear against the cool, smooth metal and listened as he slid on a condom, then thrust into her."

I experience all kinds of distracting questions in my head, like: "What does it sound like when you 'listen' to someone slide a condom on?" and also: "Why is she 'listening' to him thrust into her, vs. some other verb?"

It's an example of the way word choice interrupted my fictional dream in this novel. It happened to me every few sentences. My attention to the literal meanings of language is higher than most readers, and some people will read the sentence above, and many others just like it, and not get what the heck my problem is.

I also wondered if my problem might be as small as a missing comma. I spent some time thinking that if the author had instead written:

"She pressed her ear against the cool, smooth metal and listened, as he slid on a condom, then thrust into her."

adding a comma after "listened."

Now the sentence tips in meaning, where she's listening to the "cool, smooth metal." This is actually plausible to me in context, because she's in a laundry room, and the "cool, smooth metal" that she's pressing her ear to is a clothes dryer. So then I wonder, is the dryer running? Is she listening to the dryer? ... which sends me back a few pages to see if there is any mention of the dryer running...but no, there is not...and then I realize if she's "listening" to the dryer, then it would be "warm, smooth metal" anyway, not "cool, smooth metal."

So there you go. If you are the kind of reader who can leap immediately to a plausible explanation of what the author meant to write, and ignore what's actually on the page, then you might enjoy this novel a good deal more than I did.

I loved this book. Loved the way it went back and forth in time and the emotions through out the book. Would recommend this book.

Where to begin?! Jubilee is about Bianca's search to find a way back to herself after experiencing major tragedies, the heartache of a broken first love, losing a parent and everything in between all. Bianca finally finds some stability and makes progress to a promising future with the help of Jubilee --but not everyone in her life thinks Bianca is anywhere near stable as Jubilee is a doll.

This novel was so unique and special -while it follows a traditional narrative, there is a sprinkling of prose, verse, spoken word, and even stream of consciousness. As the synopsis notes, the story is told largely in alternating chapters: Before Jubilee and After Jubilee. Before Jubilee: We learn in bits and pieces of Bianca's girlhood in Mexicali and of her future plans with Gabe. In After Jubilee: Bianca is in college with a passion for poetry and catches the eye of Joshua who is impressed by her formidable presence. As readers, we reconcile these pieces and fragments of Bianca --who is she? What exactly happened to her -- and can't help but root for her to succeed.

Givhan does a stellar job of making Bianca come to life by giving us readers a glimpse inside her head. There's also excerpts from Bianca's literary heroes (Sandra Cisneros for one) as well as songs and other forms of art that Bianca loves.

Though short, Jubilee was a little difficult to get into at first, as the reader has to get used to the writing style and the way the story is presented. Once you get your bearings, however, this book is hard to put down. and is totally engrossing! I really enjoyed it.

I was excited to read this as I know Givhan is a Mexican-American author, and I always seek them out. This one didn’t jive with me and I couldn’t seem to get super invested in the story, but I’ll catch her next one!

This was my first book by this author.... I finished it in a few hours. The story takes hold of you fast. I found that I couldn’t put the book down until the last page!