Review: The Only Black Girls in Town

The Only Black Girls in Town, by Brandy Colbert (Little, Brown, and Co. 2020)

First line: “I would be sad that today is the last day of surf camp if I weren’t so busy trying to ignore the worst person alive.”

Brandy Colbert is a well known YA author, but this, her debut middle grade novel, is my first of hers. In the small beach town of Ewing Beach, California, Alberta is the is one of only a few black kids in the entire community, and the only black kid in 7th grade. That is, until Edie and her mother move in to the old B&B across the street from Alberta and her dads. For the first time, Alberta feels like someone else might understand some things about her that she’s never been able to adequately express, not even to her best friend in the world, Laramie. As Alberta and Edie start spending more time together digging into a mystery found in a box of old journals discovered in the B&B attic, Laramie starts hanging out with a group of 8th graders, including Alberta’s nemesis, her ever-mean neighbor Nicolette. While on the surface, this novel may appear to be an interesting mystery laced with racial history, at its heart it’s a classic middle grade story of friendship and identity, two issues of peak importance to many, many in its intended audience. As an adult reader, I found myself wanting more out of the mystery journals thread, but I know that the readers meant for this book will likely find most connections through the modern storyline. Colbert does a great job of painting those true and deep feelings of misunderstanding, isolation, and difference that are so common at this age, whether those stem from race, clothing choice, vegetarianism, family makeup, divorce, puberty, or newness.

High quality storytelling mixed with authentic true-to-life characters, I can picture many a student I would hand this book to who would eat it up.