The Story of Us

by Catherine Hernandez

This book is wonderful in so many ways. Hernandez creates such deep empathy for her characters that they cranked open my heart and left it that way. Days after reading, I still feel opened—to the lives of others, to the power of human connection, and the cruelty created in our world by poverty, inequality, and small-minded prejudice. The entire novel is written from the POV a tiny infant, remembering their life before birth and even before conception. Extraordinary, but Hernandez pulls it off, reminding us that bonds outside our blood family can be the strongest, and love changes everything.