Book Club February 2020- Such a Fun Age

By: Kiley Reid
Published Year: 2019
Publisher: G.P Putnam and Sons
Pages: 320

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Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. A mother to two small girls, she started out as a blogger and has quickly built herself into a confidence-driven brand. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

What I thought

And we’re back with another Reese’s book club pick! Our book club has a habit of accidentally picking books from her book club list and typically end up really enjoying them, so even though the summary didn’t greatly appeal to me I was still looking forward to reading it.

Emira is a babysitter for Alix Chamberlain’s two girls. She is black and the girls she cares for are white and rich. One night, Alix calls for Emira to come in and watch their eldest girl in an emergency situation. Emira was at a party with her friends, so she does not show up in work appropriate attire. When she brings Briar to the local grocery store for a distraction, a customer ends up questioning her connection to the child and brings in security. In amongst all that, Emira is a 26 year old who is working two part time jobs with no idea as to what she wants to do with her life.

The writing of this book was really good. I felt like it was well easy to read and for the most part kept me interested. My issue was that I got book fatigue about halfway through. It felt like the story wasn’t really going anywhere and I didn’t know what I was still reading. The summary of the book made it seem like the incident in the grocery store was going to be central to the book, but in reality it only comes up at the beginning and the end. This is more of a story about a young woman finding herself.

There were times that I liked Emira, which helped with reading the book, but other times when she just irritated the heck out of me. I know that I’m older than 26, but I found myself reading it and wondering “was I really that immature just 5 years ago?” And Alix is just, the worst, especially because she doesn’t realize that she’s the worst. Add in Kelley, the guy that Emira dates, and you just have a merry band of terrible people.

The positive side is that their terribleness sheds light on a lot of social situations. There are a lot of interesting conversations about racism and I can see how this book would connect with a lot of people. In the end, it’s not that I disliked the book, it just wore on me after a while.

What Book Club Thought

This was such a good book for a book club discussion. There were so many interesting points to talk about. Stephanie brought up that the author shared that one of her points that she wanted to make when writing this book was to make the reader feel uncomfortable. I don’t know if I would say that I necessarily felt uncomfortable when reading the book, but I could see how a lot of these situations would make a reader uncomfortable and that is what made this book so much fun to discuss. Of the book club members, I was definitely the least enthusiastic about the book, but we all had similar perspectives on what happened, what we thought of the characters, and even how we would’ve acted in some of the situations. I’m glad that I read this as a book club book and not just on my own.