#BookReview: Where Did We Go Wrong? - Monica Mathis-Stowe

Ahhh, to be young and dumb.  You couldn't pay me to go back to those days.  Reading Monica Mathis-Stowe's Where Did We Go Wrong? certainly did nothing to make me miss them.

Joy, Maxine and Gabby have been friends since their days at Morgan State University, though I'm unsure as to why Joy and Maxine have tolerated Gabby's foolishness for so long.  If you were to look up the word golddigger in the dictionary, you'd find a perfectly posed picture of Gabby.  And she's not ashamed of it either.

Never mind that she was in a relationship with a good man, when the opportunity to hook up with a pro football player came along, she hopped on it.  The day he signed a $ 75 million dollar contract was the day she stopped taking birth control.  The fact that he was already married with kids was just a small stumbling block.  When Gabby wanted something, nothing stood in her way.

Former teacher and current homemaker Maxine has the perfect family life, if you're on the outside looking in.  But she sees her attorney husband sinking them deeper into debt as he tries to keep up with the Joneses.  They can't afford their home, cars or any of the other luxury items he insists on.  Things would be much more manageable if he would allow her to go back to work, but Trent doesn't want the mother of his children to have to work, like his own mother did after leaving his abusive father.

Joy's fear of her mother has kept her from being truly happy.  Mind you, her mother isn't abusive, but she is very opinionated and, in her opinion, Joy has no business thinking about any man until she's completed her doctoral program.  She and her longtime boyfriend Allen have been sneaking around behind her mother's back since they were teens, but Allen is tired of being her secret.  If she can't be open about their relationship, he'd rather not be with her.

While Joy and Maxine seem to have each other's backs, they also have Gabby's, even though she's undeserving.  Joy and Maxine are likable enough characters, though Joy does make some rash decisions that I really questioned, but Gabby? This chick is the skankiest of all skanks.  The way she schemes and plots against others without any remorse is unconscionable.  Like Mitt Romney, even when it's obvious that she's playing a losing game, she continues to play it.  I don't know how the two of them tolerated her in college and beyond.

I'm eager to read the sequel to the book because I'm interested in finding out what happened with Joy and Maxine.  More than anything, I want to know if Gabby has changed at all and, if she hasn't, has karma finally slapped her in the face.  I can only hope so.

242pp
Published: May 2012

Theme: What About Your Friends by TLC