A Review of The Blackbirds by Eric Jerome Dickey

Whether it’s a thriller or a story about relationships, Eric Jerome Dickey can definitely write an epic tale. In The Blackbirds, Eric introduces readers to four best friends (Kwanzaa, Destiny, Indigo and Ericka) who will ride or die for each other. Each of these women are battling their own demons while trying to work through their romantic and family dramas.

What I really loved about this book was that Eric focused on each of these women as friends and how each of them celebrated their birthdays. I have to say that Eric did an awesome job in showing the frailties of each woman and how embarking on various romantic relationships made them so real, so vulnerable, so human. I found them to be relatable in some aspects – the hypocrisy of family (do as I say not as I do), lies men tell when they are playing games, etc.

Through it all, these women remained loyal to each other as they navigated through their various heartaches. Some found love when they least expected it while others were in between lovers or reigniting a past love.
Fantastic read! Two thumps way up!

My favorite lines:

Of the four women, Indio was the tallest. She was gorgeous, and what enhanced her loveliness were her confidence and an attitude born from two Nigerian parents telling her from her first breath how amazing she was, which coupled with an understanding of her true unsullied beauty. She was given the African-born truth before American society told her she was too dark-skinned to be searched for if she ever went missing.

Straight Outta Windsor Hills, Ericka was a hair shorter than Indio and the oldest in the crew. She was recovering from a divorce, a marriage to a man of the cloth that had been a marriage from hell, and she was in remission from cancer. She had lost her once-wavy hair during chemo. It was growing back, but she kept it cut close on the sides and back, let grow long on the top, had the hair dyed blonde and colored the tips of the top cancer-survivor pink.

Destiny Jones was Straight Outta View Park, the land of doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and entertainers. She wore a thousand and one wavy sisterlocks, all bleached and cascading down her back. Destiny had been a face that looked the same now as it had when she was fifteen and attending private school in Bel Air and used her bleached dreadlocks to conceal her facial features.

Kwanzaa was two inches over being five feet tall, but she packed seven feet of beauty into those sixty-two inches. Her complexion was smooth; Ghirardelli chocolate personified, with subtle orange undertones, insinuating her Middle Passage ancestry was amalgamated with the Trail of Tears.

Rating: 5 stars

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