My Rating: 4 stars
I actually finished this book a few days ago but held off on
writing the review because I was busy, for one (the past week has been chaotic
for me both at home and at work), and two, I needed some time to gather my
thoughts and figure out how best to approach this one. It’s not often that I come across a book that,
on the surface, reads like a simple, straight-forward story where a few dozen
pages in, I feel like the plot is going to head in a predictable direction, but
then things get turned completely upside down and by the time I finish reading,
I realize that the story is much more layered and complex than I initially thought.
The story is told from the viewpoints of the 2 main characters: Emira Tucker and Alix Chamberlain. Emira is a 25-year-old African American woman
who is college-educated but still trying to figure out what she wants to do
with her life, so she takes up part-time babysitting for Alix and Peter
Chamberlain, a privileged white family living in an affluent neighborhood in
Philadelphia. One night, Alix calls up
Emira with a favor – to take her two-year-old daughter Briar to the neighborhood
grocery store for a bit while she and her husband deal with an emergency at
home. While walking around the grocery
store with Briar, Emira is suddenly confronted by a security guard who accuses
her of kidnapping Briar and threatens to have her detained. Amidst the verbal back-and-forth between Emira
and the security guard, a handful of onlookers gather and a young man records
the entire incident on his phone. Thought
the misunderstanding is cleared up fairly quickly, Emira is humiliated, upset,
and visibly shaken. When Alix finds out
about the incident, she is outraged and determined to make things right. From there, a series of events is set into
motion that threatens to upend both Emira’s and Alix’s lives forever.
This is a book I found very readable, one that pulled me in from
the first page and kept me engaged, even during some of the “slower” parts
where nothing much seemed to happen. The
story was well-written, timely, and relatable, with characters that were not
just well-developed, but also portrayed in a way that was realistic yet
respectful and empathetic. This type of
balance is not easy to achieve, especially with a story like this one that has
a “social commentary” bent to it in its exploration of topics such as race, privilege,
class, etc. I appreciated the fact that the
author Kiley Reid took a completely different approach from most of the books
out there that address racism and bias – she took the story in a non-traditional
direction that was totally not what I expected, but in a good way. I also liked how, despite the serious and oftentimes
contentious subject matter that Reid deals with here, it’s not done in a
heavy-handed way, and most important of all (to me at least), there is no “preachiness”
to the story in that it doesn’t attempt to steer the reader in one direction or
another. Life is complicated, as are the
various relationships that make up the landscape of our lives, and more often
than not, the lines between right and wrong can become blurred and not easily distinguishable
– this is a story that reflects these complexities but does so in a way that is
subtle and therefore is more effective in its message.
This is a book I definitely recommend, one that everyone should
read, especially given the state of affairs in our country currently, and with
the issues of race versus privilege being at the forefront of so many
discussions nowadays. For me personally, this book gave me much to
think about – I only wish I had read this one more slowly, as there were some
nuances that I feel deserved some pause to reflect upon. This book definitely deserves the buzz it has
been getting so far and by the looks of it, with the many angles that can be explored
and discussed, this will likely be a hot-button read for many book clubs in the
coming year as well!
Received ARC from G.P. Putnam’s Sons via Edelweiss.
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