Hope & Glory

Hope & Glory by Jendella Benson

Reviewed by Jess
📘📘📘

There’s always something fascinating about reading stories about twins! Their connections, personalities, separate but intricately bound together. It’s even better when that story comes with secrets, lies and intrigue, and that’s how Jendella Benson sets the scene for Glory with her debut novel.

Glory returns from LA when her father passes away, returning to a gloomy Peckham and an even gloomier family. The funeral brings up questions of Hope, Glory’s twin sister who we’re told is no longer with us. But these questions don’t come with answers, so Glory starts digging despite the objections of her mother and older sister, and is shocked at what she finds.

This is a great study on what secrets can do to a family, and especially important to portray this in immigrant family culture - we know our elders fought and suffered and still don’t tell us shit! I did read this book with my big sister eyes - every move Glory makes with love interest Julian, every selfish conversation, every time she bulldozes her way through her dad’s files I could see 10 ways she could do things differently! She’s definitely a flawed and difficult protagonist. But by the end I could see methods to her motives and was convinced it all worked out for the better for her family and for herself. Congrats to Jendella on this debut novel!