Take A Trip Uptown
Love or hate? Trust or betrayal? Find out if good or evil prevails in Uptown, the newest gripping novel from writing duo Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant. Uptown is the story of a family that is painfully divided by troubling past events that is abruptly brought back together by a tragic accident within family walls.
Meet Avery Braithwaite, the family member for whom distance has become the norm. You can find Avery jet-setting across Europe on important business trips at all times of the year. Not wholly consumed by her work, but seemingly married to it, Avery has little time for family or friends. She seems to enjoy her self-imposed exile from the family, but her distance from everything and everyone she grew up with has instilled a distance in her personality that makes it hard for anyone to really discover who the real Avery Braithwaite is. She has almost created an alter ego for herself, and this façade of happiness is exactly what keeps Avery comfortable and secure. However, this security blanket becomes torn to shreds and reality reigns supreme when Avery’s mother barely escapes an automobile accident and is in need of the kind of help only her daughter can provide.
Avery returns to New York only to discover that “coming home” is more of a process than a task. Years separated from the Avery Braithwaite that people at home remember, Avery struggles to readjust to the life that she so swiftly abandoned years ago. Her cousin, the budding real estate entrepreneur Dwight Dixon, won’t get off her back about selling a property that “needs” to be sold and requires Avery’s permission to do so. Oh, and did I mention? Dwight is the primary reason behind the family strife and struggles that sent Avery eastward across the Atlantic in the first place.
This impromptu reunion between Dwight and Avery brings to the surface years of anguish and unsettled issues from the past that time and space have done anything but resolve. Selfishness and greed are prominently ever-present in this series of confrontations between cousins years in the making.
DeBerry and Grant exquisitely guide you through the lives of Avery and Dwight and skillfully allow you to enter their minds’ eyes and truly understand the emotions and feelings behind their actions. The plot twists and turns in front of you but you can always understand why the characters act and feel the way they do.
Brilliantly developed chains of adjectives string this delectable storyline together and the authors adeptly keep interest levels peaked, as the plotline progresses to a peak of its own. You become so consumed with the character base due to the extensive level of detail used to describe each character that they actually seem to become real people. I had to hold back the urge to call a couple of the characters on the phone upon completion of the novel just to check in with how they’re holding up since the writing of it.
Change, home, and an ever-changing home are the inescapable themes of Uptown. Reading Uptown helps to understand your own relationship with the one and only unique place that each of us can call “home.” DeBerry and Grant inspire this subtle reflection among readers that make this novel more of an experience than simply a book.
Uptown receives a PARL
Rating System:
P…Horrible
PA…Tolerable
PAR…Good
PARL…Excellent
PARLÉ…Classic
Also Check Out:
‘Uptown’ Girls… Meet authors Virginia DeBerry & Donna Grant
Niobia Bryant-Taking Over Fiction One Genre At A Time
Thicker Than Water… Takerra Allen Book Review
Message From A Mistress… Niobia Bryant Book Review
