A review by antimony
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

reflective
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

<i> emira makes most of her living babysitting for alix chamberlain, a rich white woman who teaches other women how to get what they want. sure, it is completely under the table, and there's no benefits (like health insurance .... and emira is rapidly nearing the date when she'll be taken off her parents'), but briar is such a sweet kid. one night, alix calls emira in a panic, needing her to get briar out of the house during an emergency, and while biding their time at a fancy grocery store, someone accuses emira of kidnapping briar. a bystander films it, trying to convince emira to confront the store, but she is humiliated and just wants to pretend it never happened. alix just wants to try and make everything right. but neither of them know that someone from alix's past is about to come back into her life, upending everything </i>

agh that was a bad summary and i lifted a lot from the jacket but whatever. im trying to put summaries in as many reviews as possible to make myself better at describing what im reading when people ask. 

anyway this is not my typical genre, but i found it in a little free library and picked it up bc id considered reading it a couple years ago. i didn't go in with the highest of expectations — not to say i thought it would be a bad book, just that i thought i might not like it because genre — but i actually enjoyed it a lot! the writing was really good, and i flew through the whole book in just a couple hours this afternoon. the characters don't feel flat in any way — even when alix or kelley are being horrendously unlikeable, you sympathize a bit just by virtue of being in their head (alix) or on their side (kelley) (well actually that is not true. i did not like kelley. but he felt real!) i liked the last couple chapters a lot (
i was really worried that alix wouldn't face any consequences and i was ready to be mad about it
) and though I'm glad that
things worked out for emira
i feel really bad for briar and i wish
emira had been able to give her a better goodbye or like say hi when she saw her trick or treating or something
definitely recommend!
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