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In her bittersweet second novel, Jones returns to the city featured in her critically acclaimed debut, Leaving Atlanta. Protagonist Aria, still wounded from a devastating loss 15 years earlier, has created an independent life while remaining intertwined with her family. Smart, perceptive, and caring, Aria begins to face her own personal crisis (infertility) even as her roommate and best friend plans to marry and it seems that Aria will do the same. Aria's situation intensifies as she withholds the true nature of her crisis from her boyfriend and close friends-a deception that sends her into a tailspin. Aria is a well-developed character surrounded by other compelling people whose personalities are often more fully revealed in flashbacks. The book's strength lies in these characters as they pull us into the story, keeping us wanting more. Jones also has a keen ability to differentiate among the neighborhoods within a modern city and the changes that have occurred over time. This book-about life's reverberating curve balls and how people strive to cope-is recommended for public libraries.-Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The legacy of a fatal accident haunts surviving family members in Jones's deep-felt second novel (after Leaving Atlanta). As a young girl, native Atlantan Aria Jackson lost her father and baby sister in a car accident; her inability to comfort her dying father, and her mother's failed effort to save the baby, have damaged their relationship. After graduating from Spelman, Aria goes to work at a local literacy center, where she is drawn to outspoken Keisha Evers, a young teen pregnant with her second child. When Aria believes she is pregnant, she confides in Keisha before sharing the news with her fiance, Dwayne. But when mysterious cramping sends her to the doctor, Aria learns that she is not pregnant but instead experiencing very early menopause. Reluctant to tell Dwayne the truth, Aria claims to have lost the baby. Dwayne's desire for a child remains strong, and Aria watches with growing envy as Keisha's pregnancy progresses. When a second doctor confirms Aria's condition, she is forced to make difficult choices with the shadow of her past looming over her. The first-person narration is convincing and genuine, and Jones handles her material with sensitivity and sympathy. This strong sophomore effort will bolster her reputation. (Apr. 18) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Adult/High School-When nine-year-old Ariadne Jackson loses her father and baby sister in an auto accident, her life in a black middle-class Atlanta neighborhood changes forever. Her eccentric mother grows more erratic, locking Aria and her surviving sister, Hermione, out of the house on Halloween or serving them raw chicken as a punishment for bad behavior. These little cruelties push Hermione to distance herself from the family, leaving Ariadne to fend for herself. Years later, at 25, Aria believes she has surmounted the traumas of her youth, until she thinks she is pregnant but instead finds that she is infertile. Her life becomes layered with lies and half-truths as she fears she will lose the promise of family and a normal life. It is the untelling of these tales that leads her finally to accept the odd turns a life may take. Teens will appreciate Ariadne's dilemma as she wrestles first with the implications of a child out-of-wedlock and then the more difficult truth that she will never bear her own children. They will also understand how she must unravel the untruths she has told, just as her namesake in Greek mythology unrolled a length of string to rescue her lover from a deadly maze.-Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The Jackson family were on their way to a dance recital when the father swerved to avoid hitting another car. Instead, he hit a tree and slowly died behind the wheel of the car, with 10-year-old Aria seated behind him. The baby sister is also killed. The survivors--Aria, Hermione (five years older), and the mother--will live the rest of their lives shattered by the accident. At 25, Aria is unsure about life. Her work as a literacy instructor is fulfilling, but she cannot seem to build the emotional attachments that are needed to sustain a courtship and start a family--until she meets Dwayne. But her struggle with guilt and her secrecy threaten whatever promise there may be in the relationship. Jones, author of Leaving Atlanta (2002), offers a delicate portrait of a young woman's emotional fragility as she attempts to get over the greatest trauma of her life. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2005 Booklist

Thin second novel by Jones (Leaving Atlanta, 2002), who follows the hapless love affair of a young, infertile African-American woman in Atlanta. It opens promisingly, with narrator Ariadne's taut recounting of the horrific car accident in 1978 that took the lives of her father and infant sister. But Jones goes on to superficially treat Aria's disappointing love affair at age 25 with locksmith Dwayne. The crux of the "untelling" is Aria's fear of revealing to Dwayne, who has proposed because he thinks she's pregnant, the devastating news she has received from her doctor: she's undergoing premature menopause and will never be able to have children. Aria teaches literacy at a nonprofit agency and lives with her Spelman girlfriend, Rochelle, in the crack-riddled neighborhood of West End. Her widowed mother is psychologically unstable, and older sister Hermione, who was also in the car that fateful day in 1978, fled home early by marrying the rich best friend of their dead father. These personal details, however, don't enrich the plot, which drags around Aria's desire to be married and stable like her sister. Whenever she sees Dwayne, who is six foot four and solid, she burbles, "He was the type of man that made you just want to climb up and hide in the branches." Dwayne is certainly charming, disarming her mother and sister, and he seems like a good catch, but the dÉnouement that brings their final reckoning seems uncharacteristic and forced. Jones does a more consistent job with other characterizations, particularly Aria's pregnant student Keisha and her crackhead neighbor Cynthia, but the many perceptive portraits don't coalesce into a compelling narrative. This vernacular and likable heroine deserves more from life--and from her author. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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