*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity..
Caution - This review does contain spoilers.
Title: The Davenports
Author: Krystal Marquis
Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★
In 1910, the Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love—even where they're not supposed to.
There is Olivia, the beautiful elder Davenport daughter, ready to do her duty by getting married. . . until she meets the charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight and sparks fly. The younger daughter, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love—unless it's with her sister's suitor. Amy-Rose, the childhood friend turned maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business—and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest . . . until family pressure has her scheming to win his heart, just as someone else wins hers.
The plot of The Davenports focuses on the way that different characters are challenging societal expectations of them, be it due to race, gender or class, when it comes to both their ambitions and who they fall in love with. For example, Helen Davenport is most at home when working on cars and reading books about engineering and she craves opportunity to work in the family business but as woman she is expected to merely marry, bear children for her husband and run a household. And Amy-Rose has ambition to open up her own hair salon and has romantic interest in John Davenport, Oliva and Helen’s brother and the heir to the Davenport business empire, but her status as a servant is a significant barrier in her way.
There is also conflict between societal expectations regarding who each character should marry and who their heart is actually with. For example, Ruby’s parents want her to marry John Davenport to secure their financial future but her heart is with a man called Harrison Barton and John’s heart is with Amy-Rose, despite the class barrier that exists between them. The way that the relationships in the story overlap is a really interesting component to the story and it’s something which I think sets The Davenports aside from other YA historical fiction novels.
Through the character of Olivia Davenport and her love interest Washing DeWight, The Davenports explores the social movement against the Jim Crow Laws. Despite being the daughter of a former slave and having experienced racism herself, Olivia seems to have been raised in a way where her privilege sheltered her from the true reality of the oppression experienced by Black Americans and her understanding of and passion for the civil rights movement builds throughout the novel. Education about slavery and the early push towards race equality in America seems to be missing from history classes across the world. Whilst I feel that ultimately change is needed within the education system in reflection of this, I do feel like YA books could be a valuable vehicle for educating young people on these topics in addition to this and characters such as Olivia could be powerful in facilitating this.
The chapters alternate between four perspectives: Olivia, Helen, Amy-Rose and Ruby. Early on in the novel I started to find myself wondering if the book would work better focusing on the story of one of the characters rather than alternating so many perspectives. Although I typically enjoy what dual perspective narratives can bring to a story, when it comes three or four perspectives it can get a bit much and this was unfortunately the case with The Davenports. As soon as you started to settle into the story of one of the girls, the chapter would change and our focus would be completely shifted. I found this to mean that I didn’t have chance to forge the connection I desire to build with the characters I’m reading about and therefore I didn’t find myself rooting for them in the same way as I would have wanted to. Whilst all of the perspectives were interesting, utilising the opportunity for a series with each novel focusing on a different character/love story would have allowed us to explore each character in greater depth. Although I do appreciate that this could have been complicated given that the overlap of relationships was central to the plot.
Despite all four romantic relationships going from strength to strength as the novel progresses, the final chapters see the couples face significant turbulence in their relationships, resulting in break ups (some stated, some implied). These break ups were orchestrated quickly and rather messily in some cases and whilst I appreciate that a bit of a ‘will they, won’t they’ plot is likely to entice readers to the sequel, suddenly putting all four relationships on the rocks seemed like overkill. Only one conflict is resolved by the end of the book and getting such little resolution made the book feel like it ended prematurely and this left a bad taste in my mouth, despite me having generally enjoyed the rest of the story. I’m not saying we should have had happily ever afters all round, but I felt that at least another one or two of the relationship conflicts should have had at least some resolution before the book ended. It was this lack of resolution that moved the book from a 4* to a 3* read for me.
I did find it interesting that this story is a YA novel despite the characters being either adults or on the very cusp of adulthood. To fit within the genre, aspects of the story such as sex were really glossed over and this was something that missed the mark for me. One of the later chapters of the story closes by implying that Olivia loses her virginity to Harrison but it’s not made clear and I think this was a big misstep by the author. Becoming intimate with a man is something which plays an important part in Olivia’s character development and coming of age story and therefore I felt it deserving of more attention than it was given. Yes, attitudes to sex and relationships before marriage would have been different at the turn of the twentieth century but that is surely all the more reason to dedicate page space to exploring Olivia’s thoughts and feelings surrounding the event. This may be personal preference due to my own passion for sex-positivity within literature but I think it’s important that sex scenes aren’t shied away from in YA novels if it’s right for the plot of the story and should instead be explored in a way which is suitable for the YA audience. Rather than implying sex was had and then swiftly moving on, I felt it would have been more appropriate to grant the scene the attention it deserved and this did impact on my overall view of the novel.
Overall, I felt that the concept of the story was really interesting but unfortunately the delivery of it fell flat. I feel the plot would have been better executed through the structure of a series with one book per character and this would allow us to explore each character’s story in the depth it deserves and would also remove the apparent necessity to focus the ending on providing an unnecessary cliff-hanger.
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