God Don’t Like Ugly is the first Mary Monroe book I’ve read.  It was available for free (briefly) at the Amazon Kindle site.  I found it to be a powerful book in many ways.

While the primary characters in this book are Black, and we explore Black culture in the United States of America from the mid-1950s until the 1980s, the character’s lives could be representative of any American’s life from this time frame who began life poor and began working their way up toward lower middle class status.

The issue threaded throughout the book was statutory rape beginning at the age of seven and how the main character coped with her situation.  A male adult was brought into the home to watch over the main character, Annette Goode, while the mother worked.  This adult earned respect throughout the local community.  Annette, as a result of this and from threats the male had made to her and her mother’s life made it very difficult for her to tell on the man.   She loved her mother, and she didn’t want to disappoint her mother.  The mother respected the man.  Any mild objections Annette raised about anything the man suggested was taken as sass, and she was chastised and told to “do anything Mr. Boatman tells her to do.”

When, in her teens, Annette became pregnant by Mr. Boatman, she told her mother she didn’t know who the father was.  Naturally, this resulted in being held more accountable to her abuser. Of additional interest to the reader are the confessions by other characters about how they handled similar situations when they were young.  Most of the characters did tell an adult and got support, but the reader can understand how difficult this could be for a child to do.

The overwhelming message that comes from this book for me is the extent to which children are subjected to sexual abuse.  I sense sexual abuse of children is incredibly widespread throughout our society, and much of that abuse is at the hands of “respectable” adults.

God Don’t Like Ugly is a powerful first book in a series.  I’ve also read God Still Don’t Like Ugly and have begun reading God Don’t Play.  The criticism of God Still Don’t Like Ugly emphasizes how much repetition from the first book is included.  The criticism is warranted.  In many series books, backstory from earlier books in the series is intervoven throughout subsequent books to keep readers caught up on critical things that happened earlier.  In God Still Don’t Like Ugly, backstory comes in large chunks of “infodump.”  I still liked the book and found differences in the back story information presented which I choose to presume comes from different perspective Annette has gained from age and experience.

I’ve started God Don’t Play — the third in this series.  These subsequent books aren’t as strong as the first book, but they’re still readable.  I highly recommend God Don’t Like Ugly.  Approach the rest of the series with caution — you may or may not like it.