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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This poignant story rings true, May 31, 2000
This review is from: Butterscotch Blues (Hardcover)
Butterscotch Blues, by Margaret Johnson-Hodge, treats the reader to a realistic, complex story about love, female friendship, AIDS, and death. A group of four friends, Sandy, Janice, Britney, and Martha, search for romantic love and self-truth, wondering and learning whether the two are mutually exclusive. Through all their tribulations and triumphs, the constant factor that sustains them is their love and support of each other. The story begins with Sandy, the main character, breaking up with a neglectful, detached boyfriend and meeting Adrian, a caring, thoughtful, and emotionally-available man. She is drawn to Adrian in part because of his light-skinned, African American beauty, a contrast to her own mahogany hue, and is surprised to find that he is actually more interested in and knowledgeable about his African heritage than she is. Sandy finds more respect and happiness in her relationship with Adrian than she has ever had, and much of what she learns she passes on to her other three friends. The other women experience various common facets of dating, including: meeting the man of one's dreams (Britney, who dates Maurice, a kind and generous suitor); having to reassess artificially high standards (Martha, who won't date anyone who's not a white-collar worker); and learning not to lower one's standards too much because of low self-esteem (Janice, who gets involved with a man who uses her and cruelly dumps her). A crisis ensues between Adrian and Sandy when Sandy learns that Adrian has a wife, Gennifer, and that he and Gennifer are both HIV positive, the result of Gennifer's infidelity. After much soul searching, Sandy overcomes her fear of infection and losing Adrian to the deadly disease and decides that their love is strong enough to sustain them. Later events shake that resolve and cause Sandy and her friends to readjust their views about what true love means and to alter their decisions about the commitments they make. Butterscotch Blues is a moving, realistic depiction of friendship between women and the decisions women make in regard to their romantic relationships. The dialogue, situations, and characters ring true. An interesting theme throughout the story is the interracial bigotry that occurs between Blacks based on the lightness of their skin, and is illustrated by Sandy's feelings about the messages her family has sent her regarding her dark-skinned appearance. The author's poignant treatment of AIDS as a potentially fatal disease highlights the fact that there is no cure and that despite improved treatment AIDS is still a serious pandemic. The best part of the book is that not only do the characters learn valuable lessons, but the reader does as well.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book moved my spirit, June 6, 2000
This review is from: Butterscotch Blues (Hardcover)
This book was excellent, I read it in one day because I couldn't put it down. The characters were believable and I could feel the love that the main characters had for one another. Plot development was excellent, the author really spent time knowing where these people were going. I loved the bonds of sister friendship and how the author explored the unsightly feelings of jealousy that we sometimes feel when it is a group of four friends, just trying to keep it together and work through our own petty issues and keep the friendship intact. I found myself sobbing like a baby near the end, this book was an emotional release for me. As a young widow I could relate too well to the pain of losing someone you love. Thank you for such a wonderful addition to my book collection, I will be ordering all of your books from now on.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emotional, Heartbreaking, Real, April 19, 2001
Butterscotch Blues is a story about friendships, about relationships and about vows. It's about 4 young ladies who met and bonded in college, who vowed to always be there for each other and to not let relationships diminish what they shared. Margaret, is an Assistant District of Attorney, 7 years overdue for a relationship, but her bar is too high, her man must have,'PhD', appending his name. Janice desperately wants a relationship and will empower any man to make her happy. Britney is timid and overweight and is in the friendship because she has no where else to be. But this is really not their story, this story belongs to dark and lovely Sandy Hutchinson, the black sheep of her family, literally. It belongs to a gorgeous Trinidadian man with butterscotch eyes, who captures her heart, invades her space and shares her greatest tragedy. It is a story of how the friendship shifts when the relationship pendulum swings to one and not the other and the friends are not there for each other. Ultimately this is a story of vows and the sanctity of their meaning. The story of a commitment that allows Sandy to hold on, as the tragedy unfolds. And it is the story of how to live the words, 'in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, till death us do part'. When I read the last page and closed the book, I sat with tissue in hand and gathered my emotions. I wanted to call someone and offer my support, then I smiled as I realized this wasn't real. What I loved most about this book, is I felt it. Felt the love, the indecision, the sadness, the despair, and then I felt the acceptance, the oneness and finally the peace. aNN Brown, The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
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