Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

 

Enjoyed this immensely. A quick read but with serious undertones.

A black babysitter works for a rich white bitch.....that pretty much sums it up, but the characters are drawn well, the relationship with the child is deep and interesting. Again Kirkus says it well:

Blogger/role model/inspirational speaker Alix Chamberlain is none too happy about moving from Manhattan to Philadelphia for her husband Peter's job as a TV newscaster. With no friends or in-laws around to help out with her almost-3-year-old, Briar, and infant, Catherine, she’ll never get anywhere on the book she’s writing unless she hires a sitter. She strikes gold when she finds Emira Tucker. Twenty-five-year-old Emira’s family and friends expect her to get going on a career, but outside the fact that she’s about to get kicked off her parents’ health insurance, she’s happy with her part-time gigs—and Briar is her "favorite little human." Then one day a double-header of racist events topples the apple cart—Emira is stopped by a security guard who thinks she's kidnapped Briar, and when Peter's program shows a segment on the unusual ways teenagers ask their dates to the prom, he blurts out "Let's hope that last one asked her father first" about a black boy hoping to go with a white girl. Alix’s combination of awkwardness and obsession with regard to Emira spins out of control and then is complicated by the reappearance of someone from her past (coincidence alert), where lies yet another racist event. Reid’s debut sparkles with sharp observations and perfect details—food, décor, clothes, social media, etc.—and she’s a dialogue genius, effortlessly incorporating toddler-ese, witty boyfriend–speak, and African American Vernacular English. For about two-thirds of the book, her evenhandedness with her varied cast of characters is impressive, but there’s a point at which any possible empathy for Alix disappears. Not only is she shallow, entitled, unknowingly racist, and a bad mother, but she has not progressed one millimeter since high school, and even then she was worse than we thought. Maybe this was intentional, but it does make things—ha ha—very black and white.

Charming, challenging, and so interesting you can hardly put it down.

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

I am a fan of Sittenfeld, especially her fictionalized account of Laura Bush's life, American Wife.  This book was not as great, in my estimation, but I did really enjoy it.

She tells the story that may have happened if Hillary did NOT marry Bill. And if they became opponents in the Democratic Primary.

It really was a fascinating read.  Here is a good synopsis from Kirkus:

In American Wife (2008), Sittenfeld imagined her way into Laura Bush’s head in the guise of a character named Alice Blackwell. In her new novel, she doesn’t bother to change the protagonists’ names, and we’re introduced to Hillary Rodham as she’s about to give her famous Wellesley College graduation speech and has an intimation of her “own singular future.” She goes to Yale, meets a charismatic former Rhodes Scholar, falls in love, catches him cheating on her, and follows him to Arkansas anyway. They try to come up with ways to tame Bill’s libido: “Maybe—what if—if I wanted it and you didn’t,” he asks her, “would you think it was disgusting if I laid next to you and touched myself?” That works for her. “Mapping out the future, coming up with strategies and plans—these were things we were good at,” she thinks. But then she decides not to marry him, and the history of the United States goes off in a different direction. The captivating thing about American Wife was imagining an inner life for Laura Bush, a First Lady who was something of a cipher, and in particular imagining that her politics were different from her husband’s. Sittenfeld sets herself an opposite task in this book, creating an interior world for a woman everyone thinks they know. This Hillary tracks with the real person who’s been living in public all these years, and it’s enjoyable to hear her think about her own desires, her strengths and weaknesses, her vulnerabilities and self-justifications; it’s also fun to see how familiar events would still occur under different circumstances. (Watch what happens when Bill Clinton appears on 60 Minutes with a less-astute wife at his side.) But there isn't much here that will surprise you.

Pleasurable wish fulfillment for Hillary fans.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

I just loved this book! Had heard lots about it and hear the author interviewed several times.  Deals with twin sisters, black. who are very light skinned. One decides to "pass" and live as a white woman, the other marries a very dark man and has a daughter who is "blue black." Very dark.  Follows their lives and how they connect in time.  The story really turns to the two daughters at some point, who come to realize that they are cousins. Very different cousins. 

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.