The Vanishing Half: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

I liked this book. It was easy to read and had great characters. It was sometimes emotional as I read about the family's issues through the years. I can see why GMA picked for a Book Club read.

Just finished The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett. Great book. Started slow and has very difficult subjects: racial mistreatment and domestic violence. Once the book gets cranking up, I could not put it down. The obvious story of the lost twin passing as white is just the tip of the iceberg. Loved the stories of how each character finally finds themselves through their struggles and choices. How life shapes each person to make them who they are.

Picked by Michelle

The premise pulls you in—an intriguing story that lays bare the weight of inheritance, stretched across the lives of women bound by blood and bruised by circumstance. Through the generations, their trials accumulate like sediment, layered with the questions of identity, the harsh mathematics of race, and the unflinching power of choice. Each decision these women make is an equation, its answer shaping not just their lives, but the lives of those yet to come. At the heart of it all are twin sisters, identical in appearance but fractured by the world they inherit. Raised in a fictional town steeped in internalized racism, the sisters learn to move through a society that sees passing as both salvation and betrayal. And yet, even in a world where their skin might grant them entry into spaces barred to others, the trauma doesn’t relent. The story reminds us that passing is no escape—it is a survival strategy built on sacrifice, a survival that exacts its toll. The town they come from, and the time they live in, are cages dressed up as choices. And in navigating that, they carry wounds—some visible, some buried deep—etched by the unrelenting hand of history.

Not the journey I expected