Rating: 
Summary: River Cross My Heart
Review: I have read River Cross My Heart, a novel by Breena Clarke.It is two-hundred and forty-five pages of heart renching brilliance. The novel's main characters include; Alice, Willie, Johnnie Mae, and baby Clara. The whole Bynum family displayed in there all but too human emotional rollercoasters. This book takes you inside the heartache and long healing process of a family after the worst devastation a family could have, losing a loved one. This takes place in the early 1930's in Georgetown,in Washington D.C. . This book gives you the knowlege of what it takes for someone to gain courage, control of their life, and to find the key inside themselves to gain all this. The best qoute in this book is,"For a few moments, she had been a woman-nearly-a grown woman like all the others."Pg95 The cover is a wonderful foreshadow of what you are about to read. A great significance in the novel, signifying the Potomac river. The title is an emotional feeling of one of the main characters Johnnie Mae. She feels that the Potomac river will always be in her heart since it played a role in her life that she will never forget. She will always have the memories. This book has become a new favorite of mine. The structure and theme made it exceptionally good. I would reccomend this book to anyone who likes reading about the younger times of America and also the wonderful insight on human behavior.
Rating: 
Summary: Dive into "River, Cross My Heart"!
Review: Some people like to read. Some people like to think. And some people like to do both. River, Cross My Heart is a book that makes you think as you read. It is a touching story about a black family living in the south in the early 1900s. The family faces racism every day. The black children are not allowed in the town's white pool, and one day Clara, a black girl, drowns when she goes to a nearby river. The novel deals with Clara's sister, Johnnie Mae, and her emotions in dealing with death and racism. The book really makes you think. If Clara would have been allowed to swim in the town pool, she never would have drowned. I kept thinking this over and over in my head. Racism indirectly killed an innocent child. I loved how the book took me back to the times of when it took place. I felt the racsim in the book and related to the black characters in the story. The author, Breena Clarke, does a great job of letting the reader relate to the characters. I really felt like I knew Johnnie Mae. I fell in love with Johnnie's character right away. This girl is so strong-willed and brave. My favorite part of the book is when Johnnie Mae sneaks into the white pool one night to overcome her desire to beat racism. Johnnie is so courageous to do this. The way the author describes Johnnie helps the reader to really know her, predict her actions, and admire her. For those of you reading this review, get the book-that is, if you want to think about what you are reading. You could read the novel as a light story for pleasure, but you really should go in depth with your thinking. This book deals with serious subjects like death and racism-subjects everyone needs to be exposed to. Anyone can read River, Cross My Heart. But I reccommend it to those who will really think-about Johnnie Mae, about the river, about racism, about death---about life. This novel is enjoyable and well-written. Give it a chance. Dive into River, Cross My Heart!
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best book to read.
Review: The book starts out slow, and it weaves its way through the past and present, which gets a little annoying. While it does have some feeling to it, and it does give a good insight to what life for african americans was like back then, I was for the most part dreadfully bored with the book. Not something I'd really recommend to people to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Beatifully written, but absolutely no plot
Review: This book was beatifully written. Breena Clark beatifully describes the lives of the Bynums, an African American family living in Georgetown during the 1920s. The main problem with this book is that it has no plot. The first quarter of the book is filled with striking events and interesting bits of characterization: Johnnie Mae Bynum's younger sister drowns in the Potomac, Johnnie Mae is experiencing growing pains as she approaches adolescence, the family is facing numerous trials and tribulations, and we meet several different potentially interesting characters. But where does all of this lead? No where, really. As these people keep going about their day-to-day business, the reader keeps waiting for a plot to surface, but it never does.Another problem with this book is that the characters remain more or less undeveloped. We learn about their daily lives and we can imagine what they're feeling in certain situations, but the author never really gives us a direct look inside their hearts and minds. Breena Clark is clearly a talented writer, but it seems she was too bogged down in expounding on the superficial aspects of her characters' lives to give them depth or to create an engaging storyline. On the bright side, this book did leave me with some fascinating images of Black life in 1920s Georgetown.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable read
Review: The term "coming-of-age story" is probably highly over-used in Amazon reviews. However, that's truly the best way to describe this lovely story by Breena Clarke. Johnnie Mae has a fascination with water. It is near the water that her baby sister, Clara, dies; it is her fascination with the water that almost gets her arrested when she breaks into the white-only swimming pool; and it is her ability in the water that begins to break her out of the segregated world of 1925 Washington, DC. This book chronicles a year in Johnnie Mae's life when all of these events happen to her. Through these snapshots of her life, the reader is able to catch a glimpse of how segregated big-city life must have looked to a child. Overall, the book is very enjoyable, and will be a quick read - perhaps for a summer day at the beach?
Rating: 
Summary: A READING IMBUED WITH UNDERSTANDING
Review: This was Oprah's pick and it'll be yours too. Debut novelist Clarke presents an affecting story of a young girl's death by drowning and the impact this has on those still living in a 1925 Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Ten-year-old Johnnie Mae Bynum feels the loss deeply as she was instructed to care for her younger sister. Guilt and confusion reign within her. Thus, we have a remarkable coming of age tale, we experience the family tensions that are the aftermath of such a tragedy, and witness racist feelings in a small community. The author imbues the reading of her work with richness and understanding
Rating:
Summary: Ok book, nothing more
Review: This book wasn't exciting. Not at all. I had to read it for my school and would've abandoned it a while ago if I didn't have to read it. The ending kind of saved the book, since the last 50 pages were actually interesting and fun to read. That is no excuse however, for the first boring 200 pages. I think the problem here is that Clarke tried to go for too many messages in one book. I'm not a great writer, but when I write, I tend to pick out one message to go through in my whole book. Clarke tried to go for too much and the result was 200 pages of nothingness. I must say, once in a while, when there is a plot twist, it gets interesting for a little while. But then it gets boring again. Talk about Clara's death seems to go on forever. I think it ends at about 60 pages after she drowns which is awful. I understand it's a great sadness, but I don't need 60 pages to do it. The way Alice acts at the trainstation also seems out of line. She was just not expected to do it. It's another message that shouldn't be there. And finally, Johnie Mae's tresspass on the white pool seems out of line also. It's an attempt of Clarke to throw in the little segregation motive which should've been left out. CONCLUSION: Don't read this unless you have to. You're not missing anything. There are far better books that this one out there.
Rating:
Summary: Rich with great character develoment
Review: If you want excitement and non-stop action, go read "Die Another Day". But if you enjoy great characters that seem so real they leap out of the page, try Breena Clarke's new novel, a great attempt at a new novel. It's slow, but gives us white folks an interesting glimpse into black culture during 1925 in a supposedly liberated city (Washington DC). The underlying tragedy of a little child's drowning pervades the book like ripples in a pool. Try it!
Rating:
Summary: Average book
Review: This was an okay book to read. The characters were average and not magnificent. This review reads like the book: struggling to get interesting.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written story,
Review: As I cross another Oprah book Club book off my list, I am now realizing why I did not read this book so quickly. It was a beautifully written story, but it lacked at times something. Johnnie Mae and her younger sister Clara are growing up Georgetown in the 1920's. At the time, the young girls cannot do many things. So they spend time hanging out at the river. When tragedy strikes the family, they must pull together to be a family again. They rely on there strong family bonds and go from there. Johnnie Mae struggles with Clara's death. She hides herself to people and does not show her true emotion. Until a young girl comes along that reminds Johnnie Mae of her sister Clara. She swears the young girl Pearl is the ghost of Clara who is there to watch over Johnnie Mae. As time goes on Johnnie Mae helps Pearl talk more and become more social. The two girl's friendship was beautiful. How Johnnie Mae found such a good friend in the times after Clara's death. I also loved how they showed the mother and her struggles with losing a child and keeping herself calm and under control. Overall, this was a good book, not one of my favorite books, but still something, I enjoyed reading.
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