Review: So Done by Paula Chase

When best friends Tai and Mila are reunited after a summer apart, their friendship threatens to combust from the pressure of secrets, middle school, and the looming dance auditions for a new talented-and-gifted program.

Fans of Renée Watson’s Piecing Me Together will love this memorable story about a complex friendship between two very different African American girls—and the importance of speaking up.

Jamila Phillips and Tai Johnson have been inseparable since they were toddlers, having grown up across the street from each other in Pirates Cove, a low-income housing project. As summer comes to an end, Tai can’t wait for Mila to return from spending a month with her aunt in the suburbs. But both girls are grappling with secrets, and when Mila returns she’s more focused on her upcoming dance auditions than hanging out with Tai.

Paula Chase explores complex issues that affect many young teens, and So Done offers a powerful message about speaking up. Full of ballet, basketball, family, and daily life in Pirates Cove, this memorable novel is for fans of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish and Jason Reynolds’s Ghost. 

This book was sent to me by the author in exchange for an honest review.

If you go back and look at some of my past reviews, I allude to the fact that there was a time when you could find books with black characters, and the black culture was basically ignored. The character might run his hands through his "curly" hair, or you might find a mention of mocha or camel skin, but there was nothing of the culture that came with that hair and skin. Then you might have the polar opposite. There were books that were full of brown skin, guns, drugs, gangs, sex, and there was one character fighting to get away from the horrors of his community.

Those books tells the stories of some black experiences, but not all of them. 

Mila and Tai live in the Pirates Cove. In Pirates Cove there are rules to be followed. Tai loves her community and she loves the rules. If you step to her she'll step to you. Always have your girls at your back, and walk with your head held high. There's an intricate dance to managing Pirates Cove and Tai is the 8th grade queen of it all. 

Mila, although Tai's best friend, is quite the opposite. She's just come back from a Summer with her Aunt and all she wants is to go back. She's hates the song and dance that's required with living in the cove. She hates the rules of her friend circle, and more importantly, she no longer feels safe in her neighborhood, but no for the reasons you may think.

This book alternates between Mila's point of view and Tai's point of view., and I'm glad it does. We, the readers, are able to see two very different perspectives on the same urban community. Tai's glad to have her best friend back, the peanut butter to her jelly, her second banana, her silent backup. Mila is ready for a change, she's shedding her nickname, moving up a level in her ballet class, and contemplating her friendship with Tai, her best friend who's house she can't bare to look at. Her best friend who talks over her and puts her down around other kids in the neighborhood, her best friend who pushes, prods, and nags, until she gets her way. The one person who Mila is just beginning to stand up against. 

As Mila begins to figure out who she is, as opposed to who the hood wants her to be, Tai is hurt and confused. Tai and Mila have been best friends forever, the summer has been torture without Mila. When Mila comes back and doesn't want to be called by her nick name, pulls away and makes new friends, doesn't back Tai up in conversation, and starts arguments when they're around other people Tai is flabbergasted. It's like Bean (Mila's nick name) left for the summer and a complete stranger came back in her place.

Unlike Mila's loving, close knit family (shout out to JJ and Jeremy, Mila's brothers. I loved them!) Tai's is a bit of a mess. Tai lives with her grandmother, she's never met her mother, and her father is constantly high and only shows up when he needs, food, money, or a place to stay, and months earlier, he did something so unthinkable, the only response Tai could manage was to pretend like it hadn't happened. But unfortunately Mila can't forget, and it's driving a wedge between them.

I loved seeing Pirates Cove through the eyes of Tai and Mila. If we're being honest with ourselves, we can all be made to feel uncomfortable in unfamiliar communities, particularly underprivileged ones. If Pirates Cover were real, I wouldn't know about the phenomenal dance school and all of the girls, like Mila, who were benefiting from it. I wouldn't know about the TAG program, that (while we never actually see it) may change the lives of these young people. We wouldn't know about people like  Mila's dad who bend over backwards to keep drugs off the streets. The media has taught us that nothing good can come from a neighborhood like Tai and Mila's, they taught us that kids like Tai and Mila are doomed from the start, they taught us that fathers leave their children, and they've taught us that no one cares. SO Done has shown us, that the media has it wrong.

5 Stars.

Read it if you're in middle school, read it if you're in high school, read it if you've never lived anywhere but Greenwich, Connecticut. This is a book for all ages, all races, and all economic backgrounds.