Malla Nunn

At Swaziland's Keziah Christian Academy, where the wealth and color of one's father determines one's station, once-popular Adele bonds with poor Lottie over a book and a series of disasters.

When the Ground Is Hard

Grace Ackerman

Sadly, I only gave this book 2.5/5 stars. I didn't love this story as much as I always hope that I do when I pick up a book. 
To start with the good, I really liked the aspects that the story portrayed. Friendship, bullying, popular kids, never-there and sometimes-there fathers, poverty, race, etc. all of that was great and portrayed beautifully. I also really like the writing style of the book. I would definitely look to pick up another one of Malla Nunn's books. Finally, I really enjoyed Lottie's character. She had a great story arc and she really brought to light some of Adele's flaws. 
Now for the things that I didn't like. To start, I had a hard time understanding when and where this story took place. I knew after the first chapter that it was near South Africa, but I couldn't tell you where the story happened even if you paid me too. Also, the characters (except for Lottie) felt very flat and without any emotion. They had personalities but for goodness sake, did they have a heart at all?! Darnell was cute and his story is sad, but I couldn't bring myself to like Adele or really any other character besides Lottie and Adele's mother. Also, the book said that the characters were in the 16-17-year-old age range, hence the young-adult genre. But, I had a hard time imagining that the characters were older than 9 or ten. The plot felt very bland and not much seemed to happen for a lot of the story. Also, the chapters and ultimately, the end of the book left me feeling very unsatisfied, like there could have been more, but it was cut short. 
I really wanted to like this book, but even after finishing it a day ago, I'm already having trouble recalling the character's names and details, which is never a good sign. This just wasn't a book for me in the end.

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

“When the ground is hard, the women dance” – African Proverb

Malla Nunn creates a time capsule of female friendship and empowerment in this historical fiction novel that takes place at the Keziah Christian Academy, a mixed-race boarding school in colonial Swaziland. Adele Joubert is sixteen and in her final years at the school, the daughter of an African mother and a white father who has two families, one white and one black. Her father is wealthy and relatively connected to his second family, able and willing to pay for Adele’s school fees and provide her with treats to bargain with and new clothes to keep her status high. When Adele finds herself rudely and summarily ousted from the clique of popular girls in her year by a new girl with more money and married parents, Adele is forced to be roommates with Lottie Diamond, the wildest, poorest and least popular girl at school. Adele feels she might break with humiliation and is desperate to regain her place with her former friends, but finds to her surprise that Lottie is difficult to ignore and has ways of making Adele look at her world and her choices that begin to change Adele’s priorities.

The roommates bond over reading the used copy of Jane Eyre that Adele’s father sent her, finding in orphan Jane Eyre’s 1847 story of hardship and triumph a kindred spirit that helps them see paths through their own lives of boarding school cruelties to a variety of hopeful possibilities about what kind of lives they want to have after school. When a boy at school, who has an intellectual disability and is thus mercilessly bullied, goes missing, the quest to find him no matter the costs brings Adele and Lottie even closer to their own, unexpected truths and ultimately to true friendship and solidarity.

When the Ground Is Hard

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