Mondays Not Coming

Monday, Tuesday, April, and August. Just random days of the week and months, right? Not in Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson. These are the names of Patti Charles' children. Everyone saw the Charles family as a nice and loving family, even Monday's best friend, Claudia Coleman. She had no reason to believe otherwise. Monday and Claudia had been best friends for as long as they could remember. They did everything together. And they would never lie to each other. At least that's what Claudia thought.. before everything changed. The duo were not a part of the "popular kids" at school, and Monday lived in a poor neighborhood where people went missing all the time, so when Monday disappeared nobody noticed. Except for Claudia. Throughout Tiffany Jackson's sophomore book - Monday's Not Coming - you will see Claudia slowly piece together what happened to her friend as she endlessly looks for her. With multiple plot twists that keep you wanting to read the book, Monday's Not Coming is definitely a suspense thriller with a chilling ending. I rate the book a 4.5/5 stars because of how gripping the plot is. 

The beginning of Monday's Not Coming introduces you to the main characters - Monday and Claudia - and the conflict. The book started with internal dialogue within Claudia after everything had happened. It then transitions into "The Before." Meaning, before she found out the truth of what happened and when she was still searching for her best friend. When Claudia went to her first day of 8th grade and Monday didn't show up she knew something was wrong. This was when the search began. Asking her parents and even trying to go and ask Monday's mom about where she was and if she was okay because Monday would never miss school and not answer Claudia's phone calls. Everyone brushed it off as there wasn't much they could do and according to Ms. Charles, Monday was at her dad's house. This soon became a question of whether or not it was true when Claudia hears conflicting information from April - Monday's sister - who said she was staying with their aunt. As the book carries on, so does the search for Monday. Claudia is struggling in school and she is in dance so she can't devote all of her time piecing things together about where Monday could be, but she is always on her mind. It was hard for Claudia to make new friends because all she had before was Monday and she could not let her go. She did not want to do anything without her, bringing her guilt when she went to parties, made new friends, got a boyfriend, ect. Without too much more time passing, another huge wave of guilt comes over Claudia when April decides to finally let her inside to see if Monday was there while her mother was out babysitting. She was sure she was in there. But when they got inside she did not find Monday, or any of the things she said she had at home. What she found was a complete mess of a house that reeked of an unknown smell. The exact opposite of what she had always described her house being like. She knew that Monday lived in a bad neighborhood, but she didn't know it was like that and she wondered why she was never honest with her. After having a short visit at the house and not finding Monday she left and went home to explain to her parents where she had been. Shortly after, everything was figured out because of some things Claudia had found at the house. This is when she found out nothing would be the same again, ever. 

Tiffany Jackson did a very good job incorporating the plot elements into this book. Starting off with my favorite part of the book - the conflict. The conflict was very detailed and there were constantly things being added to it, but it was never too much. While writing the conflict she did a good job making sure that there was a good balance in the conflict and making it not sound repetitive or boring at any parts. The conflict was very engaging throughout the entire book and it made you not want to stop reading as it built up to the climax. Monday's Not Coming was split up from "the before" and "the after" and some other time changes. Even though the perspective was changing a lot the rising action and climax still made complete sense which just shows how good of writing it was. The flashbacks also helped clarify a lot of things (like why certain characters act a certain way, ect.) and give a lot of indirect characterization. Monday's Not Coming had a lot of indirect characterization, especially through actions and speech, which helped show the characters personalities. At the beginning of the book and with the time switches there was a lot of foreshadowing. It never gave away what happened, but it let you wonder and piece things together while reading it, which is one of my favorite things in a book. The last thing the author did a really good job with was giving descriptions of the setting and the characters. Once again, a lot of this was described indirectly, but the tone of which she described some of the settings was what really made me able to imagine the places. Overall, the different plot elements of this book all tied together very well and helped make Monday's Not Coming such a good book. 

The writing of this novel made the story truly come to life. So many good descriptions, the author's tone, the way it was set up, and the foreshadowing all contributed to it. Like I mentioned before - I really like foreshadowing. This, and how the book was set up by switching from before and after Claudia found out what happened were my favorite parts. The foreshadowing added a lot of suspense to the book and it makes it sadder. Flashing back into "the before" also added suspense and clarification for a lot of things regarding Monday and Claudia's friendship. Switching between the years made Monday's Not Coming more interesting to read because without it, it may have been a bit boring at times. Not only did the book switch between the before and after, but it also switched to random months which was supposed to be after "the after." I liked this because it helped keep a mental timeline of what was happening and keeping it organized chronologically. Another interesting part of the writing was that the author included some handwritten letters from Claudia to Monday while she was missing. This highlighted a smaller part of the story which was the fact that Claudia struggled with writing. These handwritten pieces showed her handwriting with some letters being backwards and words being spelled incorrectly. As the book continued on and she was getting help in school you could see it progressively get better. I really liked this part because it showed Claudia's personal growth even while there was so much going on with her best friend. Without the attention to small details in the writing of this book it would not be the same. 

Monday's Not Coming was such an amazing book for many reasons which is why I rated it a 4.5/5 stars. The entire story-line and plot was so captivating and that is one of the big reasons why I gave this book 4.5 stars. Once I got into the second half of the book it was so hard to put it down. The way it was written was giving just enough information to want to keep reading until you got it all, essentially luring you in. Although I did love most of this book and could not put it down in the second half, in the first part I was having trouble getting into it. It's not that I wasn't interested, but it was a lot of background information and with any book that can get a bit boring. And, because Claudia was so focused on finding Monday and that's all that was talked about it was a little hard to get to know her. But, those things were only minor setbacks and I still thoroughly enjoyed the book. Those are just the reasons why I could not give it the full five stars. Despite the setbacks at the beginning, it still got a very high rating and another reason for that was the story and how it confronted real world issues, such as missing brown and black girls being overlooked. This was shown in Monday's Not Coming when Claudia went to the police about Monday being missing and they did not take her seriously and pointed to the fact that she lived in a bad neighborhood so maybe she just ran away. As much as I wish this didn't happen, it does in real life. And, unlike Monday, many of the young girls and women that go missing do not have someone that will fight for them like Claudia. It is very apparent in the story that if Claudia did not continue to speak up, Monday may have never been found. Bringing this topic to attention through writing is key and Tiffany Jackson did an amazing job with it. Because of all of these reasons, I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind a book about a real issue, with a real ending. The difference between fiction writing and real life stories are very large, but Tiffany Jackson bridged that gap with the writing in Monday's Not Coming.