This book is an exquisite masterpiece, each section nearly bringing me to tears with its beauty and brilliance. From the outset, it immerses you in a world of drugs, gangs, and familial strife, gradually revealing layers of hope, despair, grief, and love. It delves into the complexities of female friendships and the toxic bonds within our closest relationships, exploring mother-daughter dynamics, sisterhood, and friendship with vivid, bold characters. Amidst the chaos, it explores the possibility of breaking toxic cycles to pave the way for a better future, though it questions whether escape is truly attainable. The writing is poetic, and the characters are multifaceted and vibrant, leaving a lasting impression of resilience and healing. This novel is a revelation, offering profound insights into reclaiming power, self-forgiveness, and the journey toward healing.

I don't know why don't read the book summary. I truly go off with the book cover alone. And of course, I jinx myself when I discover this book was heavy like heavy topics. I typically don't like to read those kind of books, but I was willing to give it a try. I kinda regret giving this book a try because it was too sad and heavy. I didn't enjoy reading this book at all. Maybe others would. Personally, I don't like reading sad or heavy topics in books. It's my personal opinion.

Coss Aquino’s “Carmen and Grace” follows cousins Carmen and Grace as they come of age inside a world filled with drugs and gangs. It’s a story that haunted Coss Aquino for more than 10 years, from her early 20s to late 30s, until she took part in the annual NaNoWriMo November novel writing campaign and let Carmen and her cousin come alive on paper — although it would be another decade before the novel was finished. The time and effort paid off, as “Carmen and Grace” is a heartbreaking, dynamic portrayal of two women attempting to navigate, survive and possibly even thrive in a tough, unforgiving society. “Readers who go the distance will be pleased to find a deep exploration of loyalty and the drug trade’s complex relationship to the community,” wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. “This is worth a look.

Thank you for access to this book via giveaway! I enjoyed being able to check it out and have told friends about it who would be interested in the premise even though I myself did not fully complete the book. Thanks for the opportunity to learn more!

You know when you loved a book so much you didn’t know how you would review it, that’s Carmen and Grace by @melissacossaquino

If you love books that unravel with each chapter, where you get deeper to the past and you follow characters to understand how they ended up where they are, this is for you. If you want a book with a strong circle of women fighting to survive and claim what’s there’s, this is for you. If books that explore complicated relationships is your thing, this is for you.

Carmen and Grace are cousins, but really closer than that. They’ve grown up together and survived neglectful childhoods. Carmen and Grace have to confront the painful parts of being so interconnected that you lose what you want to stay together.

We start in a surprising present that brings us to uncovering who Carmen and Grace are. As a young girl Grace finds Doña Durka, who gives her a home and stability, and is also the leader of an underground drug empire. Carmen finds herself tying into this world too as she keeps a hold to Grace.

When Doña Durka suddenly dies, Grace fights to keep the sisterhood of the lost girls turned women who have found their way under Doña Durka. While Carmen finds herself pregnant and trying to find the exit to this life and a new type of stability.

There are so many things this book does beautifully from having a plot that will have you hooked to the writing itself, and especially turning the perspective of survival and love when you’re surrounded by violence. Is love those that stay around no matter what? Is love the ones that keep you safe no matter how or the circumstances? Is love protection or what puts you in danger?

Books that explore the hard choices women have to make and how they survive in all spaces are my favorite. Womanhood is so much about survival and this book gives us the hard parts with a balance of friendship, found family, and complicated love.

2023 Latinx Release
Debut Novel

This story of two cousins mixed up in the drug world was riveting to read the story sweeps you away and makes you hope for the best for them all. Would definitely read again and would make for a great movie for those who don't read.

The writing style did not work for me, but I pushed through because the story itself was really interesting.

I think some readers will absolutely love this, but there was just such a disconnect between the story and the voice that I never fully felt the story.

Round it up to 4 ⭐️

Told in alternate POV from present with flashbacks. This is the story of Carmen and grace, 2 cousins that are more like sisters who have experienced a rough reality.

They have been in the care of drug lord Dona Durkabut everything comes unraveling in the most cynical way when she dies.

This is an intense read with a tough narrative and language.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this novel in exchange of an honest review.

Hate to say it but I DNF’d about 30% in this just wasn’t for me. I tried to get into the book but it started with to many characters that lacked depth in my opinion.

Carmen and Grace tells the story of Carmen and Grace, cousins and best friends, pulled apart by family circumstances. Both girls are put to the test, when their leader is killed, and they need to step up to run the family business-- even though it was illegal. Carmen was looking to get out of the business for her own reasons, and was never as committed to it as Grace was. Grace wanted to step up and lead, taking the business to the next level, despite her inexperience and family issues that threaten to undo them.

This book was entertaining and heartbreaking. It told of a relationship between two girls as they blossomed into womanhood. It showed that the most broken of things may not be broken beyond repair, despite what you think. I generally loved this book and would recommend to anyone who wanted to read fiction around relationships between women and feminist works.

What a very interesting book how they describe the drug runners and how they Unique women friendships. It all started with This woman called DOF IAD URKES. She ran a drug corporation with her son. She had A son named TONE. He fell in love with a girl named grace. He groomed her for a lot of reasons and the mother went along with it. She adopted grace when she was fourteen years old. Once you turned 18 they've got married. To TONE. Her best friend named Carmen. They were both puerto ricans from the bronx. It shows how they want money and Respect. Grace was really interesting because she was very go getting and really operation really well after that woman died. She had a friend named red who came back from Puerto Rico. It was interesting how they ran this drug operation. Carmen got pregnant and was really hard for her because pete was really trying to keep her away from the drugs in the traffic. She loved grace because I was her best friend and she would do anything for her. It shows how loyalty becomes when you're running drugs. A lot of things happen in this book and I can really relate to it and how it started out with her imprisonment and then from there you find out. How she got there? She had a daughter with pete but it was a complicated relationship. There's a lot of twist and turns in this book and it reads like a love story and a murder mystery all of them.

Graphic and gritty.
An illicit world with its own codes, rules, and dangers.
Switching the narrative between Carmen and Grace, readers get a broader picture of the choices each woman made and the prices they paid.
I was sad that Carmen had to miss so much out of life and time with one special person.
It’s an interesting read about a completely different life and rawness that many people never experience.

I couldn't connect with the characters. Plot didn't delve enough into what led the characters to their current life situation.

Carmen and Grace by Melissa Coss Aquino is a coming-of-age story set in Bronx, New
York set during the 1990’s. The girls live a hard life and while they’ve found success and friendships dealing drugs to high end customers, all of that is brought to a halt when the local drug queen, Doña Durka the closest thing Grace has to a maternal figure, dies. Carmen and Grace is about healing and how to rebuild your life after it changes forever.

The main characters, Carmen and Altagracia (who goes by Grace) are Puerto Rican girls who come from broken homes. Only a few months apart in age, the cousins grew up as close as sisters. The girls were raised primarily by their maternal grandmother because their mothers were drug addicts. After their maternal grandmother died, when they were twelve, the girls no longer lived together. Separated, Carmen stayed with her paternal grandmother and Grace stayed with her mother.

When the reader first meets Carmen, she’s in prison at a lecture called Walking the Spiral where she and the other prisoners learn “you will never get over what has happened to you. None of us do. However, you can, will, and must get through.” Carmen’s life was a little more stable when the girls were young. Her paternal grandmother took care of her. She was doing well in school, so well she and Grace were selected to fill out an application for private school. Even though the girls didn’t live together, they went to church on Sundays and dreamed together of the freedom adulthood would provide.

Carmen felt like the private school was their way out of their situation. She thought it would lead to bigger opportunities. The reader gets bits and pieces of her teen years, but most of the action happens in her twenties after Doña Durka’s death. Carmen’s story is centered around a secret she’s hiding from Grace, she’s pregnant and wants to break free of drug dealing and live a quiet life. She doesn’t know how to tell Grace because Grace is the reason, she has money and a vocation. The girls are each other’s constants. Carmen has been loyal to Grace her entire life. What will Grace do without her? What will she be without Grace?

For Grace life was different. Living with her drug addicted mother meant she dealt with more insecurity than Carmen did. When she was fourteen, Toro, her mother’s dealer, came calling, because her mother owed him money, but she wasn’t there. Impressed by Grace’s looks and her use of big words Toro took her to a diner for lunch. From there their relationship started. Grace didn’t know their relationship would always be imbalanced, he was at least ten years older than her but she kept his attention, in her mind that meant it was okay. Ironically, it wasn’t Toro who changed her life, but his mother, Doña Durka. She was the first woman to hug Grace since her grandmother died two years before. Durka protected Grace; she told Toro he was not allowed to touch Grace until she was older. She gave Grace a room of her own, sent her to private school. Grace was smart, and liked learning, Durka encouraged Grace to stay curious, and eventually got Grace involved in the family business.

Doña Durka tells Grace to form her own crew. Durka has high end clientele to cater to and Toro’s crew would be too suspicious in the lobbies of fancy hotels or apartments. The girls would pose as interior designers, cleaners, and other occupations that would blend in. Grace gathers a group of girls, like her and Carmen, who want more from life than they currently have, but can’t get it because of any number of different reasons: some of the girls wanted to provide for their children without having to rely on anyone else, others wanted to have nice things, but what they all had in common they were all loyal to Grace. Grace encourages the girls to learn as much as they can to fit in with their clientele. She brings in professors and other experts to teach the girls art, knitting, and meditation, but also, self-defense and gun safety because it is still an illegal enterprise and they are still women.

All is going well, business is good, and then Doña Durka is diagnosed with stage four cancer, which sends Grace reeling but Doña Durka dies unexpectedly from a gun shot wound and the tension skyrockets. Who shot the Doña is a question that looms throughout the book, and her absence changes everything. The girls don’t have the same security as before. It’s up to Grace to decide where her side of the business goes. She tries to keep her moves a secret from Toro, the loyalty between them long gone and all that’s left is suspicion on his part.

Coss Aquino structures Carmen and Grace in six parts all written in close third person divided almost equally between to the two main characters: two are attributed to Carmen, one to Grace, one part to both of them, and two parts to neither. She does this to not only give different perspectives of the same events but to also showcase the similarities and differences between the girls by showing their thought processes. This broader view allows the reader to understand both Carmen and Grace in a way that they wouldn’t be able to if only Grace or Carmen narrated.

Coss Aquino further differentiates the two characters through the use of time. All of Carmen’s attributed chapters are set in 2002. She’s living in the present and looking back at the past. Grace, however, starts in 1992 and works forward to 2002. Grace is looking forward not back, the opposite of Carmen. The unattributed chapters are the first chapter of the story and the last three. These four chapters are also the ones set after the events of the attributed chapters spanning from 2003-2014. They show the reader the result of all of Carmen and Grace’s actions. The book is about how they got through the roughest point in their lives and the unattributed chapters leave the reader with satisfying endings for both characters.

Melissa Coss Aquino does a wonderful job showing complex and layered the decisions are for Carmen and Grace. They aren’t just drug-dealers. The characters are multidimensional. There are no stereotypes or filler. Each character teaches the reader something about life, about loyalty, and freedom. The story shows the reader how the girls made it through their trauma and asks the reader how they will get through theirs.

This book. It's written absolutely beautifully and brilliantly and at each section name I'm almost brought to tears. This book throws you in with no explanation, no orientation, but you're just fully submerged in this world of drugs and gangs and family feuds. And then slowly we're fed pieces of what's happening and it becomes so much more than just drugs and violence but a story of hope, despair, grief and love. It's a story about female friendships and toxic bonds we have with those closest to us. From mother daughter relationships and the bonds of sisters, cousins and, best friends. A story of how to break toxic cycles and give younger generations a better life than we were given -- but maybe that's impossible and we are just stuck in violent despairing circles. The writing was beautiful and poetic, the characters were so bold and lively, complicated and messy, so much more than meets the eye. I was so here for this badass all girl drug cartel. The more I read the more my mind was blown and my heart broke but then was healed. This had so much healing, both for the characters and for me. It spoke to how to reclaim your power, forgive yourself and forgive others. I fell in love.

I love all books that are set in New York, as the city becomes its own character. I appreciated the cultural of Puerto Ricans in the Bronx and especially appreciated that the Spanish was not translated or put in italics.

I also really enjoyed the dual perspective. I loved how the book started with Carmen and we were fully emerged in her world and her narrative of trying to get out, and then we switch to Grace and gain more context on the work they do, the history between them and how everything started. Having those two distinct parts instead of switching back and forward every other chapters was done so well and one of my favorite things about this.

This book is so different from anything I've read before and I'm so excited for it to come out and hear everyone else rave about this.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Carmen and Grace by Melissa Coss Aquino

TWO MAJOR ISSUES (and reason for the rating):

For context, I am a black woman of color book reviewer.

ISSUE #1: I take issue with the fact that the n-word is used in this book twice. To me, both instances were utterly unnecessary, and as far as I’m concerned, none of the characters using it are black, nor is the author of this work black.

I noted several references to black (pop) culture throughout the book. To this, I would say that I appreciated the dedication to speak to the geographical and social proximity between NYC/Black communities/culture and NYC/Latino community/culture. Overall, I felt these instances were fine and were not heavy-handed or pandering. However, I do not appreciate the implication that the author (or the story) can be so comfortable in this proximity that the n-word is used or needed. I’m not sure whether the two instances were a way to make a point about the use of the word and/or anti-blackness within the NYC/Latino community, but they were two too many. And to make matters worse felt as arbitrary as they did intentional. I would consider not using it and replacing it.

Please note that the use of the n-word is why I will not be posting a review on any of my platforms at this time. Accountability is important. And I cannot very well be an advocate for my community, an advocate for my community in the publishing/Bookstagram community, an advocate against anti-blackness within my and other communities within publishing/Bookstagram and outside of it, while publicly reviewing this work (good, bad, or indifferent) with this word present.

ISSUE #2: Chapter 11: The inception of Toro and Grace’s relationship was yet another moment in the book that completely and utterly rubbed me the wrong way. The series of events from when Toro and Grace meet to him effectively moving her into his home with Doña Durka felt very predatory and, if I am honest, grooming. While I understand that this moment is critical as it serves as the moment in which Grace came to meet Doña Durka, and while I noted the attempts to make this less creepy: Dona Durka’s insistence on separate bedrooms and her goal to “protect her son” from [implied] statutory rape charges. Still, it was tough for me not to cringe at the fact that a grown man finds such a connection with a 14-year-old that he moves her in with him and his mom. And then, as if it wasn’t already creepy, they have sex well before she is legal. I understand I am one person, one reader, with one opinion, but I cannot imagine how this will sit with readers. This overshadows this part of the book to me. I almost DNF’d. I would consider providing readers with a very blatant trigger warning if this part is kept.

...
All things considered, I enjoyed this book.
The premise. The story arc. Carmen. Grace. Red. Santa. China. The setting.
I was invested from the first chapter, bawling my eyes out by the last. This story elicited every emotion in me while I read: love, intrigue, fear, anger, annoyance, sadness and happiness. The last 30% of the book was complete and utter perfection. I was sobbing by the end.

First, I loved the dual perspectives. A common trend I’ve seen is that authors switch from one character’s perspective to another, from chapter to chapter. Here, I enjoyed how we had a series of chapters from Carmen’s perspective and then Grace’s perspective for a series of chapters, and then it switched back and forth closer to the end. I thought this was very original and well done.

It was so interesting because Carmen is the one who is trying to "get out” of the life, and so maybe it is the bias in me, but I thought I would enjoy her chapters more. But at the beginning of the book, she seemed unreliable, flakey, and all over the place. And to my surprise, I loved Grace’s narration. Grace just felt more solid and rooted than Carmen (and maybe that was the point), even though it was clear that she was also in constant conflict and on edge.

While the story's circumstances surround drugs and violence, this story has so much to give. I thoroughly enjoyed the message about community and the ties that bind. The ways that women are able to create community (especially after loss) and chosen family, how a group that can facilitate drugs and violence can value true love, partnership, understanding, education, and respect (as compared to communities of men). The representation of Carmen and Grace as characters speaks to how the maintenance of community requires choices and sacrifice; sometimes, within those choices, we have to decide between community and self.