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Never Meant to Meet You

Bookreporter.com Bets On...

Never Meant to Meet You

October 2022

NEVER MEANT TO MEET YOU is the second book from the writing team of Alli Frank and Asha Youmans. Their first, TINY IMPERFECTIONS, was a 2020 Bets On selection. Remembering how funny it was, I could not wait to see what they would write next. From chapter one, I found myself laughing.

Marjette Lewis is a kindergarten teacher in a tony private school. Right before the school year starts, Marjette’s next-door neighbor, Noa Abrams, loses her husband, and Marjette is not quite sure what to do. The woman is sitting shiva, and Marjette knows that food would be a great thing to bring. So she fries up some chicken and brings it next door in what may be the first time fried chicken made its way to shiva.

Marjette’s school year is going to be tough; the only other Black woman at the school, Judy, has retired. She also has an ex-husband who makes her crazy, as well as a high school-aged son who is in that oh-so-critical junior year and is sporting a girlfriend she does not trust. But I did not even get to the student in her class who seems a bit lost, or the girl’s uncle who makes the class moms bat their eyes.

What I love is not just the action, but also the inner dialogue that we play through in Marjette’s head. It’s all real, self-deprecating and sharp. I laughed out loud reading it.

At a time when everything seems and feels heavy and serious, to read a work of fiction that looks at race, religion and life in a way that is smart and quick may be just what we all need. Humor. There are times when we can use it bottled up. Here it’s in the pages of a book.

Never Meant to Meet You
by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans