What do readers think of The Air Between Us by Deborah Johnson? Write your own review.

This is a pleasant southern novel that gently unfolds with rich characterization and sense of setting. In some ways simple, it is also very satisfying by the end. The characters really made this book.

Deborah Johnson has written a wonderful story set in the South during the 1960's civil rights movement. Her writing style is superb and the story carries you along into the lives of people who were just trying to get along in life.

You meet characters that you can both love and hate and you really cannot put the book down until the end.

The Air Between Us takes place in Revere, Mississippi in 1966, a town on the brink of desegregation. The looming prospect of a future with no boundaries between races helps reveal complex and often hidden relationships, and surprising secrets, among the townspeople across races and across classes. I would recommend this book for the story. But the characters did not engage me, and the whole book is written in a folksy colloquial Southern voice, which is OK coming from the characters but annoying coming from the third person narrator.

I enjoyed this book - it held my attention and I can identity with the situation. I grew up in Texas long before integration so the book did seem believable. What is unbelievable is how things were in the South during my early years. I have memories of discrimination that I think couldn't have happened in my lifetime! When I read or watch stories about segregation/integration I often hang my head in sadness and grief.

This book brought up these feelings in me. For that reason it gets a "good". Although it is not a complex book, It is well written and clear. The writing style is simple; the story is engaging; the characters are well formed, three dimensional and I cared what happened to them. The mystery is driven by the characters and doesn't seemed forced. I found myself often thinking about the story and I wanted to know the conclusion - that also qualifies it as a good book, worthy of the read and I'd recommend it to a friend. I belong to 4 book clubs and I don't think I would recommend it - although the story is complex, the book is not challenging. It is a good book for a long airplane trip or a beach read.

Growing up in the South during this time (the 50's and 60's), I found this book very enjoyable and eye-opening. I think this book would appeal to others raised during this time that had a very limited understanding of the reasons for the integration conflicts. The plot was well constructed and moved along without time to be bored with any repetition . I would have liked for there to have been more background on most of the characters leading up to the time they all came together. I will recommend this book to my book club.

If you are looking for a novel where you can try to solve a mystery while learning about things that happened in the past then this is the one for you. The Air Between Us takes you along for the ride of racial tension between blacks and whites in the 60's and what happens when you try to provide equal education for the first time in the south. It allows you to see how relationships may have been between blacks and white folks then and how each thought about what was happening to their world.

The Air Between Us did not live up to it's comparison to The Secret Life of Bees. Due to the brief introduction of the many characters in the beginning of the book it did not capture my interest. I felt the plot suffered due to this lack of character development. The author herself states that the most difficult part of the book to write is the beginning because she does not know her characters well. However, she did highlight the roles of blacks and whites in the deep south on the verge of desegregation with an interesting plot twist revealed.

The author does a good job of describing the racial tension in the south in the 1960s which I also lived with. The end of the book is a twist which gives the reader a surprise. I didn't feel that all the characters were well developed and some relationships not quite believable. Some of the plot lines could have been more fully developed in the early part of the book, instead it seemed to quickly come together in the end. In all a good read.