This is the perfect example of AMAZING concept with an execution that just wasn’t for me. It felt very blatantly anti-Black which is something I simply cannot put up with coming from a mixed race family. I wish this story was told differently so that I could have been able to enjoy it.

I have made the decision not to read or review this book. While I have been a fan of Yoon's previous works and was excited for her adult debut, I could not get into this book at all. The writing felt juvenile and the characters seemed one-dimensional. After reading and watching reviews, I have become aware of discussions about the harm that this book may bring to the Black community. So it's a no from me dawg.

I'm really on the fence with this one. I really liked the exploration of the racism theme, but I'm unsure if it was done in the best way. Since the overall handling of the theme was questionable, I only feel comfortable speaking on the writing. This is Yoon's move into the adult fiction world. I think it worked in some aspects, but it's not quite there. I think some will find that it reads a little young adult stylistically. The story did keep me interested and I didn't have issues following the story or wanting to discover what happened next in the plot. While I know there is an audience for this book and certain readers will love it, I'm very certain I'm not a part of that audience. It just wasn't for me.

This book was way different from any other Nicola Yoon I've read in the past. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of my favorites, and it left me not sure of what I should be feeling. I think it will make you more aware of the racism that happens around you, but the way that it's ultimately dealt with in the book is unnerving. If the premise has you curious, you may want to give it a try, but if you're looking for a book similar in style to Yoon's other books, you'll probably want to skip this one.

This book was really fantastic! I have read all of Yoon's YA novels and this was a departure from her past works but what a great departure!! At first, it felt like the Stepford Wives where everyone was black and then it became much more complicated. Even though the signs were there, I actually didn't quite see the ending coming but in the end it did all make sense of the events that led to it!

So right now all i can give this is a 3 star. It def could change. Idk the ending really left me stuck and idk how to feel.

Also i would like to touch on the fact that jazmine was a character that i could have liked so much if it wasn’t for her constant one line personality. The author didn’t give her any depth except that she was for black lives and was not trusting of cops. But i wanted more from author. I know the author made her so extreme bc of the ending but that was just lame.

And lastly this didn’t give thriller as much as i wanted it to, but it was an easy read that i flew through

Let me preface this by saying I LOVE Nicola Yoon and she is one of my auto-buy authors, but this book kind of fell flat to me even though I understood what she was trying to do. All the police brutality talk was a bit much, it was on almost every page! The saving grace was the fact that it had Netflix's "They Cloned Tyrone" vibes and that's what kept my interest. I would love to see more adult fiction from Yoon and obviously, I'd read more YA from her.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

A totally new author for me, but since the blurb mentioned it was "highly anticipated" I felt it must be a worthwhile read.

Description:
Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.

Jasmyn’s only friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by most residents' outlook. Then Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders. Frustration turns to dread as their loved ones start embracing the Liberty way of life.

Will the truth destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined?

My Thoughts:
The setting of an all Black community seems rather sad to me. It seems more like a regression to segregation rather than the integration and diversification I think we all want to see. However, as a concept for a fictional book it's an intriguing idea. I could see how the allure of moving to this gated community where the police, shopkeepers, and residents were all Black provided an escape from racial tension. I found the wellness center early on to give me vibes of brain washing and cult mentality. It became more and more creepy as the book went on, and in the end for me it was offensive. Maybe this is what the author was aiming for, to achieve that uncomfortableness for the reader. A very interesting book that raises a lot of racial issues and questions.

Thanks to Knopf through Netgalley for an advance copy.

This is a hard one for me to review, for a couple of reasons. Having read and loved Yoon’s Instructions for Dancing, I was really eager to read her adult debut, but it didn’t work for me at all. For one, I found the writing to be very juvenile – there was a lot more telling than showing, and many of the characters felt one dimensional. It was unclear what audience Yoon wrote this for and what message she was hoping to leave with readers. On a recent episode of Book Talk, Etc., Hannah recommended When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole as an alternative, and I heartily cosign. While the novel clearly aims to comment on racism and the daily challenges Black people face, I wish it delved deeper into these themes. Being a white woman can’t speak to the lived experiences of Black people, I’m including some own voices reviews. [Reviews to check out: on Storygraph – bahahreads; Goodreads – Erin, Bri, Kimberly, Casey, Miesha; Instagram – Cree.]

I wanted to love this, because Hello - Nicola Yoon. However, this was not quite what I was expecting. It felt very disingenuous to being Black, I don't really know how to explain it, but it just was not what I was expecting it to be,

Nicola Yoon’s provocative debut adult thriller is set primarily in a gated California community called Liberty, where everyone, from the wealthiest resident down to the lowliest part-time employee, is Black. Jasmyn Williams is a Los Angeles public defender whose teacher-turned-financier husband King had to work hard to persuade her to move out of their city apartment and into this affluent enclave. She likely would never have agreed were it not for her concerns over their six year-old son Kamau, as well as for the baby she’s currently carrying. Jasmyn can’t deny the allure of raising her kids in a place where she won’t have to fear that they’ll be gunned down by racists. She knows that giving them the chance to grow up in a place where racism doesn’t force them to second guess their every move is a real privilege.

And at first everything seems just as nice as King had promised. Kamau thrives under the tutelage of Black schoolteachers, and Jasmyn loves never being side eyed while shopping in one of Liberty’s cute little stores. But, with few exceptions, she notes that her fellow residents seem more concerned with spending time at the town’s Wellness Center than with making a difference in the wider Black community.

Even so, when her best friend Tricia asks her about life in Liberty, she hedges:

QUOTE
Of course, not everything there is perfect. But maybe because she’s still feeling defensive that Tricia had called Liberty bougie, she doesn’t tell her about the imperfections. Jasmyn doesn’t tell her that, after living for six weeks in a town filled with Black people, she’s found only one so far who she actually likes. She doesn’t reveal that neither she nor Keisha had been able to sign a single person up for their Black Lives Matter chapter yet. Keisha had told her she’d asked almost every preschool parent she talked to all week. They all said the same thing: too busy. Even now, Jasmyn wants to shake them, tell them that being busy is no excuse for not getting involved.
END QUOTE

Jasmyn and Keisha are thus thrilled to be able to recruit Charles, another disaffected spouse who’d been reluctantly persuaded to move to Liberty, to their cause. At first, he’s as gung ho as they are about affecting meaningful change. But when he abruptly does a one eighty, claiming to be too busy with going to the spa to join them in protests, they begin to worry about their friend. Sure, people change their minds all the time. Charles, however, seems less different than entirely brainwashed.

An alarmed Keisha decides that she needs to leave Liberty, even as Jasmyn determines to dig deeper into what’s going on. Meeting with the town’s most important people does little to reassure her, as Jasmyn realizes that even a renowned Black psychologist like Nina Marks is going to give a disappointingly evasive if not outright terrible answer to her queries:

QUOTE
Nina is too smart for the academic argument she’s no doubt going to make. Her next sentence will be about race being a construct or something else not remotely useful. It isn’t even that Jasmyn disagrees, but, in the end, who cares if race is a construct? The barriers it erects are real enough.

Jasmyn shakes her head and reiterates. “I’ve been Black as long as I can remember,” she says.

Nina Marks leans in. “And when did you first realize what a huge problem that was?”

The question chases away the fog of good feeling that had cocooned her. Again, she feels the sensation that she’s being watched. Again, when she checks, no one is.

“My Blackness is not a problem. Racism is the problem.”
END QUOTE

Even as she’s trying to keep the problems that Black people face in the forefront of her existence, Jasmyn senses that she’s fighting a losing battle in Liberty. But what will she risk, and what will she be willing to sacrifice, in order to protect her family and herself from something far more malevolent than she’d ever dreamed possible?

Riffing off of The Stepford Wives, One Of Our Kind is a book that isn’t afraid to tackle structural and internal racism, criticizing denial and escapism but perhaps coming down too hard on the same Black people it claims to love. It can be tough to fully sympathize with Jasmyn, as she rarely lets up on herself or anyone else around her with her focus on Black trauma and pain. She sees self-care as weakness, an unnecessary self-indulgence while the world burns. Instead of understanding that self-care is even more important in a world that devalues your humanity, she views relaxation with suspicion, considering it time wasted when you could be vigilant and/or volunteering instead. She’s as judgmental as she’s often accused of being: were she a real person, she’d be due for burnout even before taking into account the stresses of living in Liberty.

Which isn’t to say that she’s mistaken about there being something deeply wrong with her new community. What happens in the end is a knife blow that will definitely set people talking. I’m hoping that readers come out of this novel understanding the tragedy of not only racism but also erasure and despair, and with a better sensitivity to the struggles for justice that continue to roil the United States today.

This is a very difficult review to leave because I just did not care for this book at all. While I thought I understood what the author was doing with the story, it undermined my assumptions when, in the end, the Black people were doing experiments to turn themselves white. Somehow, this author has made this a book about how being Black is the root cause of all the problems, and the solution is to no longer be identified that way. As a white reader, I felt very uncomfortable with the tone and summation of this book.

I requested this book because it sounded good and I’ve enjoyed YA books by the author. However after seeing a number of negative reviews from Black reviewers, I’ve decided not to read/review/share this book with my friends/followers. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free ebook to review.

I hope you guys appreciate honest reviews because you’re about to get one. Buckle up. 😂

I was not a fan of this one. When I heard Get Out/The Stepford Wives I was immediately intrigued. Although the plot and the bones of the story were good, I thought it was heavy handed and lacked nuance. It started out well but went downhill fast. The term used by another character to describe the FMC, “blacker than thou” was fitting. It was heavily implied that if you relax your hair or wear anything besides bright loose clothing you are attempting to erase your heritage. She openly judged other black women that didn’t have Afros or braids. I don’t believe that people should have to “prove their blackness” to others. She seemed to think in extremes and to be honest, the FMC really got on my nerves. She also pushed the narrative that people that participate in self care are selfish because they are spending time that could be spent on advocacy. My mental health background and personal experience with anxiety & depression tell me otherwise and I feel that this is a dangerous narrative to promote. She also suggests in the story that if you aren’t entirely consumed with current events and don’t spend every minute of your days upset about current atrocities and injustices that you are uncaring and ignorant. In my career, I often dissuade my patients from watching the news because it exponentially increases anxiety and depression. I know as a white person this is not MY fight but to put it plainly, a lot of what was preached was ignorant and harmful. I felt like I was being beat over the head with the message of racial injustice every other sentence. Quite literally, this FMC never had a conversation in this story about ANYTHING else. I appreciate her passion but she was THAT friend that never shuts up about politics even on a night out. It was also suggested that anyone who tries to alter their physical appearance is vapid and as a proud user of Botox, that just pissed me off. 😂

I did actually really enjoyed the ending so I gave it 3 ⭐️ but otherwise, it would’ve gotten 2 from me.

This was quite a thriller centered on black identity. A good book provokes emotion and this well written story certainly did that for me. Obviously, something was up with this utopian community from the beginning, but exactly what would it be? The more I read, the more I dreaded the ending. I really liked the slow build and the horror of the end. This story really made me think. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

I have thoroughly enjoyed Nicola Yoon's previous YA novels and was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it definitely missed the mark for me. The book raises important issues about racism and social justice and I applaud it for that. However, I'm not entirely sure what the takeaway was supposed to be. For me, the reading experience was also hampered by problems of character development and plot (especially for the thriller category this book is being pitched as). I think a bit more all-around nuance would have made for a more compelling story.

I was excited to read this one because I loved her YA books. Unfortunately this one missed the mark. I thought the concept was interesting and kept me reading but this one just wasn't for me.

Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to pre-read this book.
I liked this book until the epilogue ad then it just fell apart. I was so disappointed in the ending, it has to lose a whole star.

𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐: 3.5⭐️
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: mystery/ thriller 📚

𝙼𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜:
I didn’t even realize this was a thriller until I was half way through and looked it up on Goodreads

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
Heavy themes of racism
Unlikable characters
The Stepford Wives meets Get Out
Social horror
Unique plots
Domestic thriller
Thought provoking reads

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚍:
This one was hard to put down because I just wanted to know what the heck was going on

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛:
Doesn’t really give thriller/mystery vibes IMO
I wasn’t a fan of the ending- I felt like there was so much build up and the reveal was disappointing
It got a little repetitive

I don't know how to review this one. Thankfully, I found it to be a quick read, but I didn't really enjoy it. I'm used to reading Nicola Yoon's YA books and I think this was her adult debut. It just felt like a miss for me. As a white woman, it also feels weird to read and/or review this book as I don't completely understand the struggles that POC go through. The "thriller" aspect of this book was just meh to me. And I also didn't enjoy the twist/reveal at the end of the book. It just felt like the entirety of the plot and the ending just made the book fall flat for me.