How do I start to describe _The Mothers_? Visceral? Riveting? Heart-wrenching? In the end this novel is all three and then some. _The Mothers_ opens with a chorus of a collective female voice that divulges the tragic history of beautiful Nadia Turner. Years ago, her mother, Elise, committed suicide just moments after leaving their church, and now both Nadia and her father are left to deal with Elise's "unfinished business." Nadia must make her way even as her church congregation suspects that madness has cursed the Turner family to make unwise decisions in both life and love. The question I kept asking myself as I read the novel is how free am I from my mother's choices? How free am I from the choices I made when I was younger and will I ever have to account for them in the future? In _The Mothers_, the past has the presence of a character-- it moves and changes just as Nadia does. At seventeen years old, Nadia falls in love with a fellow church member and loses her virginity to him. She winds up pregnant, and chooses to have an abortion, a decision that haunts the couple for years to come. Brit Bennett's voice is consistently charged with energy and yet simultaneously, her words have the kind of warmth and familiarity as though the novel was a secret being told by your closest friend. _The Mothers_ is a story about black women's sexuality and cultural judgment within a black church in California, in which female virgins are considered to be more prized and favored by God than those who are not. Men are exempt from this kind of communal judgment. Each line that Bennett produces cracks open with more intensity in order to ask over and over again: What if? The past and the present converge with each blossoming subplot until you begin to wonder what "mistakes" you've made in the past that changed your future, and whether or not you will have to grapple with them. _The Mothers_ is a rollercoaster ride that picks up very quickly even while maintaining its complexity as it moves through the interwoven journeys of Brit Bennett's unforgettable characters.