Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this advanced reader’s ecopy. Overall, I enjoyed this novel, but I found the first 2/3 of it a bit slow. I found myself getting distracted or not interested enough to pick up the novel. The last 1/3 was much faster paced and I was invested in the characters by then. I greatly appreciate and admire the author’s writing of race and class in America, with the back drop of Obama’s election.

It’s 2008 and Barack Obama has just won the election. African Americans like Ruth Tuttle rejoice, slightly letting out the breath they weren’t aware that they were holding.

Ruth is an accomplished engineer, Ivy League educated and married to an equally successful black man named Xavier. But Ruth did not always live a life like this. She had to work hard to put her past behind her and make something of herself.

Worlds collide when Xavier pushes Ruth on why they have yet to have children. All this time Ruth has kept a secret from Xavier, one buried so deep she’s more or less kept it from herself. Years ago, as that poor teen, Ruth became pregnant. The decision to keep or give up the baby was never up to Ruth, but the decision for what to do next is.

Most of the novel centers around Ruth’s return to her hometown and her search for her son. But back at home, Ruth is forced to face more than just the child she never knew. Here she revisits feelings of racial inequality, family woes and monetary struggles she’s distanced herself from for years. She also befriends a young and fragile white boy, nicknamed Midnight who is a surprisingly similar lost soul.

The Kindest Lie is a thoughtful novel that takes on the hard decisions of life. Addressing race relations is at its core, but on a bigger scale this is a book about acceptance and forgiveness of oneself.

Thank you to author Nancy Johnson, William Morrow books and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

I am a stickler for meeting deadlines. If I have a due date in October, I get my work done in August. So although I was thrilled to receive The Kindest Lie in a giveaway, when I found I needed to have a review done by February 2nd - I freaked out! I admit I very begrudgingly started reading this book like a child with an assigned book report.

But OH MY GOODNESS. I apparently did not understand what a gift I had been given. This book. This book is so full. And the fact that it begins on the night of Obama's inauguration in 2008 is just too cool as I sit here waiting for it to be tomorrow so I can watch Joe Biden's inauguration!

Ruth has the perfect marriage, career, husband - she has broken the rules and achieved the success that her black grandmother wished for her. But when the pressure to have a baby threatens to destroy everything she has achieved, she returns home to see where she went wrong and unwittingly discovers family secrets.

Jodi Picoult said it best, "I think The Kindest Lie" is a deep dive into how we define family, what it means to be a mother, what secrets we owe to those we love, and what it means to grow up Black. This beautifully crafted debut will keep you asking these questions and more."

Thank you to Netgalley, Nancy Johnson, William Morrow Books, and Bradeigh Godfrey for the opportunity to read this book.

The Kindest Lie tells a truly relevant story that feels especially important in light of what the US experienced this summer. Thoughtful and engaging, this is a worthwhile read.

The Kindest Lie had me from the first page. The book was set during 2008 when Barack Obama became our nation's first Black President. What I noticed about the author's writing is that there were no wasted or unnecessary words. It was so refreshing to read a book where the story just flowed on every page. There are some possible triggers in regards to race, class, gender, and excessive use of force by police.

Ruth is an engineer, married, and her husband, Xavier is ready to have children. What her husband doesn't know is that Ruth already has a child she gave up as a teen. She decides to go home to Ganton Indiana to find out what happened to her child. Ruth went home to get answers from her grandmother and brother. I felt Ruth was completely selfish in how she handled the situation. I get she had regrets about giving up her child but to come into town demanding certain things was not realistic. I really wanted to fight her when she got disrespectful with her grandmother! You have to read the book yourself to find out howRuth's search for her son impacts her life.

We also meet a strange little white boy nicknamed Midnight. I was not expecting how Ruth and Midnight's interactions and strange interconnectedness added so much to the story. My feelings regarding all of the characters changed throughout the book and they will stay with me for a long time to come. This is an excellent read for any book club. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this ARC

The Kindest Lie follows Ruth as she wrestles with her husband wanting to start a family just as she is trying to come to terms with the baby she left behind when she left for college. The book gives us a look at racial and class disparity and tries to help define what a family is. I liked that it was written with the backdrop of the 2006 election of Barack Obama to the White House which injected the whole country with energy and hope. The Kindest Lie starts out slowly but overall I enjoyed watching Ruth discover her past and herself a little more.

Ruth’s husband is excited to start a family but she is keeping a secret about the baby she long ago gave birth to and abandoned. Ruth makes the choice to return home and dig into the past but in the process unearths many family secrets and becomes friends with a young boy named Midnight.

I enjoyed the dual POV of Ruth and Midnight. It was interesting to see events of the town through the two different viewpoints and how it affected Midnight, a white boy, and Ruth, a Black woman. I was drawn in as each family secret was exposed and they had to navigate the impact. The setting of a small Midwest town, affected by racism and hard economic times, creates an added strain on the relationships.

This debut is beautifully written. I couldn’t put it down. It’s heartbreaking and hopeful and an honest portrayal of race relations in America. It’s also a story about following dreams and finding a way back home. I love stories that switch between characters and the author did a great job of keeping the reader engaged by interweaving the perspectives and stories of two very different characters. This novel is brilliant and stunning, and I highly recommend it. This is an author to watch.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for my ARC for an honest review.

This book starts on election night in 2008. It's the story of Ruth, a Black woman, who was forced to give up her baby at the age of 17 so she could go to Yale. She is now 28, a successful engineer in Chicago, and has told no one about the baby, including her husband. Ruth and Xavier are ready to start their own family, but she has regrets and decides to go back home to find out what happened to her baby.

This is a story about race and class set during a major historical event and the financial crisis. It's a story about what mothers sacrifice for their children.

I think this will make an interesting book club discussion book.

Ruth didn't fit who I thought she should be, based on her background. I was disappointed with her not being able to see the bigger picture of the consequences of her actions on everyone else. I also disagree with her assessment of Midnight's future, but I understand what she meant.

Received this ARC from William Morrow and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. I struggled with this one. I feel like the author tried to do too much. There were too many themes that didn’t get developed as fully as they could have been. I don’t feel like the synopsis fully fit the story. The book wasn’t terrible, but I just felt it left me looking for something else.

Ok everyone. Go ahead and put this book on your TBR right now. Trust me. This book is a 2021 must read. Perfect for book clubs and buddy reads because there is so much to dissect and discuss within these pages!⁣
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This debut novel by @nancyjauthor delves into some very timely topics, such as racial inequity, white privilege and systemic racism. In response to recent events I have been hearing a lot of, “This isn’t who America is.” A much more accurate and fitting statement would be, “This is 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 who America is, but what can we do to fix it?” I believe this book is a great place to start.⁣
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Other important themes that Johnson touches on are motherhood, family, forgiveness and the lengths we will go to protect those we love.⁣
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These characters are deep. Johnson does an incredible job with each one and helps the reader understand how their decisions are all impacted by years of family history, economic despair and discrimination. Yet they still remain hopeful for a better future.
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This is a book that you will feel deeply and not soon forget. ⁣
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Thank you to @netgalley and @williammorrowbooks for the advanced digital copy!⁣

**Thank you to William Morrow for the advanced copy for my honest review**

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson is a story about race and class, but just as much a story about a mother’s love. Ruth and Xavier have been married for 4 years and feel like they have everything going for them. As Xavier starts pushing to start their family, Ruth starts pulling away. She has been hiding a secret from everyone in her life since she was 17–she had a baby when she was a senior in high school and her Grandmother, who raised her and her brother, had her give the baby up to protect her future. Now that Ruth is older, she is questioning the choices that were made by her and her grandmother. She finally confesses to Xavier and heads back to her hometown to try to make her peace with the past and come to terms life’s consequences.

I really enjoyed the first third of the book—I felt like I connected with the characters right away and wanted to find out more about them. Then I went through a period of really being irritated with Ruth and her self-righteous behavior about finding her son, with no regard for the life he’s had for 11 years. As things came together, I got back into it and really wanted to see how Ruth found peace with her past. This book has a lot of great discussion points and would probably be great for a book club. I enjoyed the story and the writing and would definitely recommend it!

At age 17, Ruth Tuttle left her factory town in Ganton, Illinois—and her a family secret—behind in order to attend Yale on scholarship. Sure, she was often intimidated by her Ivy League classmates. But by her late 20’s “she had become a butterfly, shedding her cocoon and finding her legs.” As a Black chemical engineer in Chicago, she was described as an “enviable talent.”

Despite her perceived success and big city life, Ruth was keeping a secret from her husband. And when he continuously pressured her to start a family, Ruth had to finally reveal her baby’s adoption 11 years earlier.

“The truth could serve as a needed relief value, lowering the pressure inside their marriage before it exploded. The birth of her baby seemed to happen in another lifetime. To another person even. What did a wife owe her husband? How much retroactive truth-telling could be expected?”

After admitting her lie, Ruth sets out to find her son in order to move forward and make peace with the past. She heads back to her hometown to find that modern-day issues, such as racism and poverty, have not gotten better on the heels of Obama’s election. Although there was a hint of “hope” in the air, it was a fallacy. Readers soon discover that just because a Black man is president doesn’t mean things are better. There’s still a racial divide and issues with law enforcement, equal rights and racist attitudes. Especially in Ganton.

In addition to highlighting racism and working-class life, this book also deals the topics motherhood and abandonment. Ruth had to reckon with abandoning her child and by being abandoned by her mother. Both situations were orchestrated by her grandmother (“Mama”) in order to give Ruth a better life…one that her Mama never had.

Does every woman keep a secret tucked away in her heart? A cross to bear all alone? “It struck Ruth that every mother’s choice had repercussions for generations, and it fanned out into a web that could ensnare you or catch you when you slipped. It all depended on how you looked at it.”

“Perfect mothers didn’t exist, only perfectly flawed ones did.” At the end of the book, Ruth is able to see “herself and her family through new eyes—their flaws and their beauty—and she chose to appreciate them because, in the end, they were family.”

Overall, I was very pleased to read this debut novel by Nancy Johnson. It had great flow and for the most part, was a fast-moving page turner. I found that she created well-developed, relatable characters and dialogue. It was easy to put myself in Ganton as if I were a part of the story. I’m grateful to her for showing us what it means to be Black in America. We need more of these stories.


Special thanks to William Morrow and Custom House for an advanced reader copy, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

A beautifully written novel about race, class, family and motherhood. This book was set against the backdrop of the Obama election and life in the Midwest due to the recession. The moments in Chicago were wonderfully written and I could feel the city around me as I read. Great debut novel.

This was a slow burn as Johnson masterfully built a family and community of complex characters. Ruth has made it out of the small town poverty she grew up in. She is a Yale graduate, happily married to Xavier. As they consider starting of their own, Ruth returns home to answer questions about her childhood .
Ruth and her brother Eli, where abandoned by their mother and raised by their grandparents. Returning home she connects with another main character, Midnight, a young boy who is growing up in her home town being raised by relatives as well.
As Ruth uncovers more family secrets than she count on, it also brings up questions. The biggest question is, what does it mean to be a mother? One of my favorite quotes is, “ There is no right way to be a mom. You do what you think is right at the time and pray everything comes out alright”. This will spark a great discussion on , race, class and most of all what it means to be a family. Thank you to Harper Collins for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This debut novel really snuck up on me as the story developed. I picked this up from Netgalley based on a recommendation from Anne Bogel’s Winter Reading Guide - she compared Johnson’s writing style to one of my favorite authors - Tayari Jones. I would agree that there are similarities. This novel provides insight into how race really affects Black people on a very basic level through the compelling story of Ruth - a successful Black engineer who gave up a child at 17 and now 11 years later seeks to find him and upends the lives of many of her friends and family in Indiana as a result. At first, I found her character rather self absorbed and found her sudden and relentless pursuit of “the truth” very selfish. Also, I didn’t care for the story of a 11 year old White boy ironically named “Midnight” whose life intersects with Ruth in a way that isn’t very realistic. However, as the story develops he serves as a way to illustrate White privilege - the author notes that however “bad” his life is, he has a better chance of success than young Black men, something that is illustrated pointedly near the end of the novel (I won’t divulge the details). This is a very promising debut. Johnson developed a real sense of family within the community and church she describes. I look forward to her next novel.

Perhaps the book gets more interesting after the first quarter, but I had to quit. I couldn’t handle reading one more time about her having a baby at 17 and regretting it. It was explained like 10 different ways: fully belabored. Get on with it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I love to read historical fiction and I often wonder which pieces of history that I have lived through will be the ones that authors will research and tell stories about in the future, the way today's authors do with the 30s and 40s. The Kindest Lie takes place in one of those moments in time; 2008, from Election Day to New Years. Ruth, a successful black woman works as a chemical engineer and is happily married to a man who is ready to start a family. Ruth wants to be ready, but beginning the process stirs up emotions from her past. She's never told a soul that she had a baby at 17 and gave him up. Her grandparents and her brother sacrificed so much to help her keep this secret so she could have a chance to go to Yale and pursue her dreams. When her secret comes out, Ruth is forced to go back to her hometown and face the truth about what her family did and what she left behind. There, everyone is suffering from the recession. The automobile plant that employed most of the people in town has closed. People are struggling to find work and make ends meet. The story goes back and forth between Ruth and a a young white boy called Midnight, because he tries to fit in with his non-white peers. Midnight is struggling with the loss of his mother and he feels like he doesn't belong anywhere.

The author does a great job of capturing a moment of both hope and despair in our country from the point of view of black and white Americans on the poorer end of the working class.

I received an ARC from Netgalley.

A tale about the struggles of Ruth, a black chemical engineer, from a small town who struggles with giving up her baby as a teenager.

An excellent read that illustrates race, family, and secrets. It will make an excellent book for any book club as there's many topics to discuss (plus there's mention of food so you can plan accordingly).

A very thought provoking book that should be on everyone's to read list

Nancy Johnson Has written an important and fascinating novel of race, class, and family. Set following the election of Barack Obama, the story follows well-educated, successful Ruth, an African American engineer who travels to the humble fading town in which she was raised to find the child she placed for adoption as a teenager. There, she finds a crumbling industrial town filled with poverty, racism, and hopelessness. .While looking for her son and examining the circumstances around the adoption, Ruth begins an unlikely friendship with a young, struggling white child which will greatly impact Ruth's future and family choices. The themes of race, class, and what we'll do for family in contemporary America and carefully and heartbreakingly examined.