Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow




Challenges:
Diversity Bingo 2017: Biracial main character

This book is about Rachel who literally falls from the sky one day. Her mother takes her and her two siblings to the roof and Rachel is the only survivor. Throughout the story we follow a number of characters as people try to make sense of what happened. Rachel tries to adjust to her new life living with her grandmother and struggling to find an identity when people don’t consider her as belonging, because she is considered alternately white or black. We also slowly figure out what happened to bring her mother to the roof with her children that day.

As for the challenge this book fits perfectly. Rachel is half black and half white and there are a number of instances in the book where this issue comes to the forefront. Having said that I do wish we saw more of Rachel’s struggles with it. It is like she just brushes it off when the black girls at school call her white or other people tell her she is not like “other black girls”. You can tell she takes it to heart but we don’t really hear anything more about it. To be honest I felt like that for most of the book. Things happen but people just seem to shrug it off and continue without really reacting to anything. I just didn’t really connect with any of the characters, maybe because I just didn’t really understand their motivation. Towards the end I did find Brick becoming a slightly more interesting and “active” character, but then the book ended…


I gave this book 2 stars out of 5. 

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