LoveReading Says
Reeling with raw beauty and an unstoppable spirit of survival, Melissa Coss Aquino’s Carmen and Grace debut is a devastatingly forceful coming of age novel set around an underground drug empire in the Bronx. Powered by the harrowing struggles and courage of two cousins who’ve been inseparable since they were little girls, it’s an exceptional crime drama underpinned by a sense of hope that it’s possible to break the most vicious cycles of violence, and that lost girls can be found, and come to find themselves.
Carmen and Grace are characters you won’t forget in a hurry. Cousins who are more like sisters, they survived tough childhoods marred by addiction and neglect. While Grace has a desire for power, Carmen wants a different kind of life. Into this comes Doña Durka, a powerful matriarchal figure in their Bronx neighbourhood who takes Grace in and also looks out for Carmen. But with this sense of strong stability comes the violence and risk that goes with the drugs trade, for Doña Durka oversees a drugs empire.
What happens when the matriarch kingpin suddenly dies and Grace is set to take over and expand the business will have you on the edge of your seat. Consummately gritty and gripping, Carmen and Grace explores ambition, injustice, breaking constraints and sisterhood with fire and heart.
Joanne Owen
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Carmen and Grace Synopsis
Carmen and Grace have been inseparable since they were little girls – more like sisters than cousins, survivors of a childhood marked by neglect and addiction. For too long, all they had was each other.
That is, until Doña Durka swept into their lives and changed everything, taking Grace into her home and playing an outsize role in Carmen's upbringing too.
But Durka is more than a beneficent force in their Bronx neighbourhood. She's also the leader of an underground drug empire, a larger-than-life matriarch who understands the importance of taking what power she can in a world too often ruled by violent men.
So when Durka dies suddenly, Carmen and Grace's lives are thrown into chaos. Grace has been primed to take over and has grand plans to expand the business, but Carmen is ready to move on – from Durka's shadow, and from always looking over her shoulder in fear.
As tough and tender as its main characters, Carmen and Grace is a devastatingly wise and intimate story about the bonds of female friendship, ambition and found family.
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Melissa Coss Aquino Press Reviews
In a world fraught with violence, Melissa Coss Aquino brilliantly delivers a heartwarming, loving novel with characters you are inspired to ride or die with. From page one, I was deeply invested in Carmen and Grace and their wild predicament of having to negotiate between their tight bonds and their ambitions. It had me up late turning the pages wanting to know if they will make it out without destroying everything. If you love reading novels about creative, ambitious, and relentless women who are committed to community and making a way out of no way, read this book! -- Angie Cruz
'Electric, heartrending, and exceptionally tender - this novel examines the limits of familial loyalty, twisted cycles of poverty and violence, and how far we'll go to protect those we love most. Carmen and Grace are unforgettable characters, vital and flawed and relentlessly enthralling. Every sentence of Melissa Coss Aquino's debut feels acute and deliberate, a shard of glass held up to the light.' -- Danya Kukafka
'Prepare to not breathe. This is a remarkable, heart-pounding book based on the best kind of tension-the real kind. Carmen and Grace is the story of two young women swept into the underground drug trade, each trying desperately to gain freedom, in their own ways. It is by turns touching, terrifying, and mesmerising. Melissa Coss Aquino is a brilliant writer and this is the book of the year.' -- Rene Denfeld
'I was crying like I lost my best friend as I finished. Carmen and Grace crackles with life: its cruelty and kindness in equal measure. This book is an act of love, a story about found family, the magic sacred space that is created in a circle of women and, above all, the power and lessons of intuition. It will break you apart and remind you that we can all be put back together again, stronger, and wiser than before.' -- Xochitl Gonzalez
Carmen and Grace is everything I could want in a novel: a wise and ferocious exploration of mothers and motherlessness; an urgent, heart-pounding journey to power and safety; and an all-too-human rendering of what we choose when choice is an illusion. In Carmen and Grace, Melissa Coss Aquino offers us two of the most indelible, vital characters in modern literature. If this novel were a lifetime achievement, it would be enough - but it's only the beginning for Aquino, and for that we should all be thankful. -- Katie Gutierrez Cousins
Carmen and Grace share a traumatic childhood that has bonded them together tightly. That is, until they meet a sisterhood of women known as the D.O.D, who are guided by a leader of an underground drug empire, Dona Durka. This plot-driven novel explores the bonds of found family and the ways in which power and ambition can sever relationships -- Lupita Aquino - Today.com
About Melissa Coss Aquino
Melissa Coss Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer from the Bronx. She received her MFA from the City College of New York, CUNY, and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, CUNY in English. She currently works as an Associate Professor in the English department at Bronx Community College, CUNY. She is a proud VONA, AROHO, and Hedgebrook alumna. This is her first novel.
Twitter: @mcossaquino
Instagram: melissacossaquino
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