I absolutely loved this book! The author's voice came through very well, and with a fresh perspective. The story unfolded with plenty of twists and turns to keep my interest and keep me guessing!

During this current environment, I try to avoid books covering certain topics. This is a book I should have avoided. It was a difficult and uncomfortable read.

Such a Fun Age is a great debut novel by Kiley Reid. It touches upon the ideas of race and privilege and how two girls coming from small towns can grow and leave their own footprint on the world.

I am not sure how I feel about this book. I enjoyed most of it, up until the end.
Emira is a 25 year old young woman in 2010. She is struggling to find her way in the world. Currently, she has 2 part time jobs. One job is a typist at The Green Party, and the other is a sitter for a precocious 3 year old. Emira is a lot of things, during her sitter job, she is a loving presence to Briar, but with a cool interaction with Briar's mother, Alix. Alix clearly favors her new baby, Catherine, to Briar. Briar senses this distance. Alix is married to Peter, an anchor at a news station in Philadelphia.
With her friends, Emira is a party girl, wearing slutty clothes and drinking far too much.
She hardly makes ends meets, and has no health insurance, which is a concern, as her birthday is coming soon and she will be off of her family's policy.
Emira is black. The family she sits for is white. One night after partying with her friends, she is asked to take Briar out to a local grocery store as the Chamberlain family has to deal with an act of violence at their house. While at the store, Emira is confronted by a security guard, questioning why a black woman is out late, dressed as she is, with a young white girl. A young white man, Kelley, films the interaction.
From there, everything changes in Emira's life.
This is a story of a girl struggling to find her way, to balance racial relationships, and to stand up for herself.
I liked how Emira grows to be strong, but I didn't like how some of the characters behaved.
#SuchAFunAge #KileyReid #NetGalley

Despite the book's lighthearted tone, a lot of really heavy issues were covered: race, class, wealth, friendship, and white guilt. The character development was strong all around, and worked in the cast's past without getting too caught up in it.

There are parts that felt superficial or forced, but overall, I appreciated this book.

Such an interesting perspective on a story that has been told before.

It was a fast and enthralling read and I was very happy it was one of Reese Whitherspoon's picks!

I found the relationship between the babysitter and the employer so interesting. This book covered so much ground and I enjoyed it a lot. Emira is expected to keep so many secrets, and to cover for so many people. I think this book describes race relations in such a meaningful and impactful way.

I was so happy to have a chance to read Such a Fun Age, and when I heard it was chosen as Hallo Sunshine pick for January, my excitement was huge.

Such a Fun Age was such an amazing book.
No wonder it took bookish community by the storm! It is well deserved.

In my honest opinion, this is the perfect book for reading clubs and buddy reads, as it’s thought provoking.

While talking about race, classes, one’s place in the world and people’s relations, it is very enjoyable to read.

As I already said, it deserves all the success.
I expect this brilliant debut to be on many bloggers’ lists of favourites of 2020.

Honestly a bit underwhelmed by this one. The premise was riveting, the cover was beautiful, and my expectations were high. The writing was fine and the story was OK but it wrapped up and rather than being fulfilled or unfulfilled it was pretty “whatever.”

Everyone seemed to reading this book and I felt like I had to catch up and see what the fuss was all about!

I enjoyed the book - the nuances and the dialogue about race are so important. I loved Emira (she was such a well developed character) and her devotion to Briar was so sweet to read about. Reading about Alix and Kelley, however, made me so uncomfortable because of how they acted. I have really bad secondhand embarrassment and the things they said and did were so cringeworthy I had to put the book down more than once.

Overall, it was a very thought provoking book and I read it relatively quickly because I wanted to see how things would play out. And even though the message of the book is serious, the tone is not too heavy and there is plenty of humor throughout.

In Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid embarks on a fresh and interesting exploration of the uneasy performance of “wokeness”—a word and concept made of paper-thin tissue, so conspicuous that it now immediately breeds distrust. The novel is a quick read tackling an issue critical in society today, but it lacks an element of reality, and therefore, staying power.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have to say, I loved this book. The characters were so genuine and relatable. The subject matter was timely. The writing style was good without being too over the top. I felt like I was spending the evening with friends rather than reading a book! I actually ended up staying up all night to finish it. I highly recommend this book!

What happens when a black babysitter and her white 3-year-old sittee have an impromptu dance party in a grocery store? Someone alerts security. So begins Kiley Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age, which alternates perspectives between the 25-year-old Emira Tucker and her 32-year old boss Alix Chamberlain.
After Emira is accused of kidnapping Alix’s toddler Briar, the two women are at a crossroads of their strictly business relationship. Emira gets the wakeup call that she needs more stable employment with health insurance before she turns 26. Meanwhile, Alix is horrified by these accusations and doubles down to solidify Emira’s status as “part of the family.” As Emira starts to pull away, Alix is driven by guilt (and the desire to not be perceived as racist) to learn details about Emira’s personal life that she had never bothered to learn about before.
Such a Fun Age from Alix’s point of view feels like a bumbling comedy of errors. Her desperation to position herself as Emira's friend is just as deliciously cringe-worthy as a reality TV show drama. Every time she convinces herself that she's one step closer to winning over Emira, Reid flips to Emira's perspective, who doesn't understand why Alix is acting so strangely.
Emira's tight circle of friends are simultaneously her source of inspiration and anxiety. They add some much needed levity to her life, but by celebrating their career successes, Reid highlights how directionless Emira feels, even with a college degree. Emira shares an apartment she will not be able to afford when she’s kicked off her parents’ health insurance, and she doesn’t have any job prospects to get her new health insurance from anyways.
While Emira’s point of view largely centers around familiar "quarter life crisis" anxieties about establishing a career, her story could have turned dark at any moment. Emira has a real fear for her life when she realizes that strangers saw her as a threat to a young child by virtue of being a black woman in a high end grocery store. This fictional scenario is not unlike like the countless examples of people of color who become hashtags after being followed, harassed--and sometimes, shot--for simply walking around stores with hoodies or driving their own cars. A man who witnesses and records the altercation on his phone offers the footage to Emira, with the intent of having it go viral to make the grocery store publicly apologize. Emira knows that being shoved in the spotlight would do her more harm than good if the public were suddenly making snap judgments about life.
The nuances of class and race are dissected poignantly without feeling preachy. While Alix and Emira’s lives both revolve around Briar’s, the home lives are leagues apart. (Something that Emira is acutely aware of and Alix is not.) The gaps between Alix’s perception of Emira versus the reality the reader gets to witness are delightfully cringy.
This small(ish)-town drama is an addictive read that will make you think at the same time.

In this debut novel we follow the fall out of a young black woman being accused of kidnapping a girl when in reality she is her babysitter. Emira and Briar are in a affluent white grocery story and there are several witnesses...

Alix Chamberlin has made a name for herself as a strong woman who can handle a job and two young kids. Emira is a 25 year old college graduate and part time babysitter about to lose her health insurance. A connection from Alix’s past has now pulled both these women in different directions.

Such a Fun Age addresses issues in society involving race and privilege. Thoughts on motherhood and how our internal struggle with self can influence how we see others.

This would make a great book club pick!

I requested this book only after seeing all the hype around it and never actually read the description. I was pleasantly surprised at how much depth this book has while also having some unexpected twists. A really interesting and important conversation about race and privilege.

3.5 stars rounded up for some interesting plot details.
Emira is a 25 year old black girl who babysits for a well to do white couple's young daughter in Philadelphia. Alix, the mom, calls Emira at nearly midnight one weekend night begging Emira to come take the three year old girl out of the house real quick while Mom and Dad deal with some issues. Huh? Okay...
She goes, grabs the little one, and takes this child to a late night grocery store which is where Emira has a confrontation with a security guard who assumes she must have stolen the child because let's be honest WHY would a three year old be out at a grocery store with ANYONE at midnight is baffling. Well, the confrontation is filmed, some weirdness ensues with Emira and the dude who did the filming and even more weirdness unfolds between them and the mom, Alix. As not to spill too much more of the plot, I'll stop here and move on to my thoughts, of which I have plenty.

First- this was just WEIRD. So many unbelievable things and contradictory things. Like, why would this supposedly super bad ass woman known as an empowering fierce force of a lady also be some weird needy, blithering, annoying, whiny, obsessed-over- her-long-gone-high-school-boyfriend and be so ridiculously concerned with what her 20 something sitter thinks of her?

Second- weird female relationships both of those women who are Emira's friends and also those who are Alix's (all of hers equally as annoying, by the way). So much of all of these parts were awkward and could have been easily removed. I felt nothing for any of these women except annoyance.

Third- no way a mom is waking up her 3 year old at midnight and the child is cool with that. No MOM is cool with that! Here honey, go roam the nut selection at midnight while mommy keeps the preferred child home and we deal with the cops together.

Fourth- god I found some of the foreshadowing exaggerated and forced. This really felt like I was watching a straight to video domestic drama.

I did like some of the plot connections but overall I found this to be a disaster for far more reasons than what is listed above. None of the characters were likeable except maybe the 3 year old. The dialogue was terrible. The character names were awful (girl named Alix and boy named Kelley) and hard to keep everyone straight. At a certain point I didn't even continue to try.

Anyhow, thanks for letting me rant.

And thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC on exchange for my honest review.

This book had so much hype I had such high expectations. However this book fell flat for me and I had a hard time finishing it.

Thank you for the ARC in exchange for a fair review.

I’m very happy I managed to get a digital review copy at the eleventh hour, because this is one of the most important books to appear this year.

Such a Fun Age doesn’t just touch on the topics of race, class, adulthood, motherhood, change, but dissects them realistically and savagely. The characters are fully fleshed out and believable, their movements and dialogues true to life, and the contrast between the lives of Alix and Emira is stunning.

On the one hand, it would have been nice to get more of Kelley’s and especially Peter’s perspective, but on the other hand, the detailed accounts of the two women more than make up for this. It’s like watching two worlds collide in a life-altering way, much like what Emira feels in the opening scene of the novel, when she gets a call from her employer in the middle of a birthday party.

Emira seems to be a character that wonderfully embodies the insecurity and indecisiveness that come with being in your twenties and finding yourself seemingly the last one in the friend group to have life figured out. We feel for her, and her positive qualities as a person are reflected in the way her friends, Briar, Alix, and Kelley react to her and are all drawn to her. She seems to radiate calmness and find comfort in routine, e.g. in the structure and logistics of taking care of Briar. This very quality might be the reason she still doesn’t have a “real” job at twenty-five.

Her connection with Briar is at the centre of some of the most touching and heart-warming passages in the book. The secret of this connection is simple, because she truly listens to the girl and responds to her needs and interests in a way Briar’s biological mother is simply unable to.

It might be Emira who is perpetually broke, about to lose her health insurance, watching her friends slowly become settled and successful while she seems to be going nowhere, but it’s Alix who constantly compares herself to others. She is so insecure that she has to ask everybody around her if she did the right thing and organizes group video-calls with her friends that look more like councils of war. I got the impression that she’s so self-absorbed and focused on keeping up appearances, that her children, her family she claims to value more than anything seem to become non-playable characters to her. I see the way she gauges other people’s reactions to what she says and does to see if she did well, the sneaky way in which she tries to befriend Emira as if she were some kind of trophy to win and put on a shelf, as highly incompatible with the public persona that teaches women to speak for themselves for a living.

She and Kelley truly seem to be in some kind of silent competition to be as well-intentioned, but at the same time as problematic as possible. It’s like they’re constantly trying to convince themselves that they’re good people, as if infinitely questioning whether one is a good person could replace the work that needs to be done towards becoming one. And I think that Ms. Reid’s portrayal of this particular human trait in the novel is a great success.

One thing that could bother some readers are the somewhat long flashbacks and the bits where a character’s backstory is condensed and retold, but these parts are very important for the development later on, and I don’t see how they could have been presented in any other way to give us the full picture.

Some further things I really enjoyed in this novel are Zara’s character and the short, crisp, calm reveal of the twist near the end. The way Briar speaks is a delight to read, it makes the reader smile even when her mother attempts to shut her up.

The powerful voice behind this story is one that needs to be heard, as it explores and humanizes experiences that we’re not used to seeing from the other side of the glass, such as being accused of trying to harm your favourite human being in public because your skin colours don’t match, or saying something inappropriate on TV and becoming a target.

I would go so far as to say this is a book that needs to be in school curricula, or at least on reading lists recommended to young people, especially in the US.

I've been excited about this book since I first heard about it, and it did not disappoint. The characters sucked you into the story and the story kept you turning pages as fast as you could. I devoured it in a day. I loved it.

Okay, I think this book was trying to be really deep and introspective on the issues of race and white privilege but it wasn't successful. She brought up all of these really relevant interactions and then just left me hanging. I felt cheated. I wanted more, in depth exploration of Alix's, Emira's, and Kelley's thoughts and cross cultural/racial interactions. Reid barely skimmed the surface. More focus was put on the storyline instead of seizing the opportunity of delving further into the uncomfortable and varying aspects of racism in our society. Somewhat redeemable was that the story documented Emira's journey into finding herself - her worth, her passion, her path and this was a bit enjoyable, keeping me reading on to the end. Reid touched on some factors that started to address white privilege and thoughts/actions often gone unrecognized but they fell flat as we were forced onto hearing more about Alix's obsession with Emira and her personal insecurities (by chapter 3 I got it already!). It was just a bit too shallow and Blah, so it gets a basic 2 star vote.