Customer Reviews

Hot Johnny (and the Women Who Loved Him)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As Sandra Jackson Opoku spins her tale about Hot Johnny and his various women - his wife, Destiny, Lesbian Lover Lola Belle, Cara, Tea, Cinammon and others. I am mesmerized and melting.

His Wife says:

Johnny, too good-looking to be good. It was hard for me to look a handsome man full in the face. It would be like trying to stare at the sun. The glare of his beauty would almost blind me.

His women say:

"Yes, we have our hungers.... We take him in, hoping to touch his magic, and we ourselves are remade."

Hot Johnny says:

"I want you to love yourself, to know how beautiful you are."

His Lesbian Lover says:

"Hot Johnny was a special man."

Another woman says:

"Hot Johnny gave me my first taste of tenderness.... he touched me and something down there fluttered, tremulous as a baby bird being coaxed from her cage."

Sandra Jackson Opokus Hot Johnny is a novel depicting the various stages of Hot Johnnys life with complex stories in the voices of the women who love him. Each woman, each voice, describes her connection with Hot Johnny.

Yes, we have our hungersWe take him in, hoping to touch his magic, and we ourselves are remade.

Destiny is Hot Johnnys meek wife who is the mother to his baby girl plagued with illness: Miz Jones, 38-year-old woman who has a sexual fling with him as a teenager, Cinnamon Brown, the sexual addict that Hot Johnny attempts to remake into something else, Tree and her experience of the first taste of tenderness, Malaika of Somalia with passionate and indelible memories of Hot Johnny. Gracita Reinu is Hot Johnnys great-grandmother and guardian spirit who infuses him with a strong spirit and the courage to survive through a family tragedy.

There was something elusive and untamable about that long cool drink of waterHe was like a ray of sun that warms your skin for a moment.

The puzzle-like stories, pieced together by the reader, of the various women in Hot Johnnys life are intriguing; however, a profound sense of disjointedness is evident. Overall, this is a wonderful, ambitious saga of the women in a mans life

Reviewed by Lotta Honey
From Lottas Bookshelves

This has been one of the first books that I have read by Sandra Jackson-Opoku and it was very intreging. I Love the way she had intertwine the stories of each person involving Johnny's life who was mostly raise and helped by woman. I tell you this much if it wasn't for them females and his looks he would of been on the streets scraping for changes just like any other homeless man. Her written is very poetic and colorful just like her cover. The book isn't for everybody as I agree with some of the readers and it's for high readers which have more of a open mind to the different eras of culture and time frames engulf around Johnny's up bringing. Yes I do believe the title can be a bit misleading for some reviewers but you have to understand as to why he was giving that name. The reason why I havn't givin it a 5 star is because it does have alot of characters which can be confusing at times but as long as you stick to it they all have thier purpose in being there. I'm happy that it's part of my collection.

Although some opinions were good, this book did make you want to flip back a few pages to cross reference what you just read - but I enjoyed it once I got the knack of it.
I could not believe the irony in these stories, I thoroughly enjoyed the way the characters crossed one anther's paths one way or another, from Detroit to NC to Somilia, Africa to Asheville, NC.
This book shows how a family secret so dark came put two people togehter who never should never be. It's a shame but family secret in black families will always be a part of our history and our futures. We will never know exactly who all our families are, truth be told, you could actually be married to a family members - secrets have a way of being unraveled, this story shows that when Hot Johnny goes back home to find his family.
Makes you wonder if that child being sick was a direct reflection on the parents roots?
Over all I enjoyed this book, each character with it's own story bundled up at the end to form FAMILY!

I really enjoyed this book. Although this book is for a more mature reader and you have to pay close attention to what you are reading so you do not get lost it is definitely a page turner.

Hot Johnny is........hot. This book tells the life of Johnny through the eyes of the women in his life, backwards. Don't let the cover fool you, it's not all about sex. It gets confusing at times, but it is still awesome.

I just finished reading this book after several attempts to get focused enough to read more than a few pages at a time without pausing to think about and really digest what I'd just read. This wonderful story is not one that you can just fly through and get the main idea of the story and feel satisfied that you've read the book. For those who want to read a book and not be left saying to themselves "what?" and then have to go back and read a particular chapter again because they didn't read it carefully enough the first time to fully understand the book, this is not a book you will enjoy. I enjoyed reading about the different encounters John the Baptist had with different women and seeing how one man can affect different women in entirely different ways, but still be just "one man". After having gone back again to re-read some parts to get a better understanding I still think I may have missed a few things, but overall the book was satisfying if for no other reason than it held my interest and made me ponder on the complexities of a man and understand how a person can be both good and bad to different people at different times in his life based on what he's going through. Read this if you enjoy stories of those who start out one way and evolve into something entirely different in the end. Excellent crafting of words and detail on the authors part, but the layout was a bit confusing.

I didn't like this book. I found it to be a confusing mishmash. There are too many characters and the story seems disjointed as it jumps from one female's prospective to another. The cover is goregeous, the blurbs are intriguing. The actual book was a let down. I took it back to the store four hours after I bought it.

I found it really hard to concentrate on this book, mainly because there were too many characters. Several times I had to go back to previous pages to try to understand what was going on. The first few chapters were great, but the story got dull and repetitive after a while. Some characters did not make sense at all and were totally out of place in the story. Most of the women were too complicated and it was nearly impossible to figure out at times how they fitted into Johnny's life. It seemed that everyone was related and at the end the reader is left thinking that the whole story is one big messed-up incest drama. The characters jump back and forth in time and it's hard to keep up with them. Sometimes it's a good thing that every character gets to tell their side of the story because they are all a piece of a puzzle, but in Hot Johnny all the women were pieces of different puzzles and they never came together.

This is one of the worst stories, I have tried to read this year. I was unable to finish this book. It was too many characters and not a story line to follow. Everyone woman is telling her story and I just couldn't get into it.

This book was WACK. NOt at all what I was expecting the concept that it was supose to didn't turn out they way it should. DOn't waste your money buy a paper back or better yet a used it's not worth the money