Review: Monday’s Not Coming

Monday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. Jackson; read by Imani Parks (Harper Audio 2018)

First line: “This is the story of how my best friend disappeared.”

I downloaded this audiobook as another of this summer’s Audiobook Sync free selections, and decided October was the time for me to give Tiffany Jackson another chance. Several years ago, we read her debut Allegedly in my Bibliobitches Book Club, and it left me devastated and feeling betrayed, despite completely captivating my attention. I know Jackson’s a stunning writer, I just wasn’t convinced she was for me.

I do think we have another impressive piece of fiction in this, her second novel. Thirteen-year-old Monday Charles is missing, and her best friend Claudia is the only one who seems to notice or care. When Monday doesn’t show up to the first day of 8th grade after Claudia’s been away at her grandparents’ all summer, she’s confused and worried. But as the days keep going by, and no one can offer any explanation for where Monday is, Claudia’s desperation grows. While Claudia has always felt like she and Monday were more like sisters than friends, she’s starting to wonder if she didn’t really know everything about her, and what secrets Monday was keeping from her.

Jackson jumps around in time a lot throughout this novel. Y’all know I love a non-linear timeline, and I loved it here too, although it was sometimes hard to keep straight on audio. We bounce between “Before”, “After”, and “Before the Before,” and I really had a hard time separating the Before and After timelines. Monday is present in the “Before the Before”, which makes that clear, but Jackson purposefully doesn’t explain what the event is that separates the other two, adding to the trickiness. I wonder if I would have had an easier time with that part in print. That being said, her structure definitely added to the suspense, and kept me listening to figure out what happened to Monday and how these three separate timelines contributed to her story.

I didn’t find the twist at the end quite as surprising or jarring as I did in Allegedly, which honestly, was a good thing, and I think I’ll keep reading Jackson’s novels. That’s not to say it wasn’t devastating — it definitely was. This is not an easy book, to say the least. It covers child abuse, sexual abuse, the viciousness of rumors, poverty, and violence. Not for the faint at heart. But I’m impressed by Jackson’s ability to spin a tale, to suck the reader in so completely and leave you whirling at the end. I know her YA audience devours her books and leaves them clambering for more, which is just what this teen librarian heart loves to see.