Dreamland Burning

Summary: When a skeleton is uncovered in the Chase family's Tulsa backyard, seventeen-year-old Rowan decides to investigate. With the help of her best friend, James, she starts to put together the pieces of a compelling story that took place in 1921, around the time of the Tulsa race massacre. The chapters of the novel alternate between the points of view of Rowan and Will Turner, who was living in Tulsa in 1921 and was, in ways that Rowan will slowly uncover, connected to the story that she is uncovering. This is an incredibly captivating and, I think, important novel.

pros:

- rowan is a really good protagonist!!! i really like her character. she's smart, charming, and is a very believable teenager. her friendship with james is also really nice and i always appreciate characters in fiction that are like me.
- rowan's parents are also hella cool lol.
- the plot was really engaging and fun and i honestly was freaking out at the end of that one chapter when i thought joseph was going to get hurt.
- JOSEPH!!!! i loved joseph and ruby so much they were so delightful and my heart was going out for them i honestly wish they had their own pov chapters
- ruby is a little rascal and well-written annoying child characters are always appreciated
- great commentary on being biracial and how that coincides with visual oppression/personal self-discovery
- in general the pacing of this book was really good, i finished it in like three hours and i was engaged the entire time

cons:
- i am not sure if the author is mixed but i am making the assumption that she is white. i am a little tired of reading books by white authors on poc, especially black, issues. latham did a really good job with this book but i definitely would have been more comfortable had this been written by a different author.
- on that note, the amount of times some variation of the n-word was used lmaooooooooo if the author is indeed white.... ok
- i am not really that sold or happy with the whole “vernon is actually black” twist idk it works and its supposed to tie into geneva's whole “this is a black man” mystery but it feels a little rushed
- also for that matter, i liked will a lot and was happy with him as a character overall but i'm tired of white povs in books surrounding racial issues. i don't care if will was one of the “good whites”. i really couldn't tell if the author wanted us to think that will was bigoted at the start or he was always like a good kid or something i think him being half-native was supposed to make us feel bad for the clarence situation but i felt like... idk my dudes the only reason he was nice to ruby was because she reminded him of his dead sister so that's a hmmmmmmmmm
- also the whole ordeal with will's dad like Yes we get it there are Good Whites this good white married an Indian woman what a good White like i know not all white people were kkk members in 1921 and there probably were a lot of people who sympathized with black people at the time but it's a little annoying considering that it comes off as being white savior-y especially near the end of the novel
- i liked arvin and rowan's relationship but it's probably the most underdeveloped part of the book. i think the author was trying to tie arvin's death into current racial issues and develop rowan as a character but it just felt completely disconnected from the rest of the book, especially with the very shoe-horned “arvin's aunt's friend is ruby goodhope's daughter” reveal. the book needed to be longer if it wanted to work in a plotline like that.
- i did really like this book i swear but i also feel like... hmmm... the usage of indigenous people in this book... not the best

*4.5 stars.