Good afternoon everyone I’m excited to share Bethan and my review of Such A Fun Age which we buddy read together recently. If you’d like to read more of Bethan’s book reviews please follow her on instagram using the link below.
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Book Synopsis:
When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for ‘kidnapping’ the white child she’s actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right.
But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.
Such A Fun Age is available in all formats now. You can purchase your copy using the link below of through your local indie bookstore.
Bethan’s Review:
I won’t summarise because everyone and their dog has read Such A Fun Age. I really liked the characterisation (not the personality) of Alix (for 90% of the book) because she’s a character I haven’t seen much and a different portrayal of racism than a lot of books represent. It felt very applicable to people you know, not racist bogeymen. Her internal dialogue often felt very real to me and could be super revealing; I think Reid drew her very well. I also loved Briar and her relationship with Emira was cute.
I never fully gelled with Emira. She was seen through Alix’s eyes half the time and maybe because of that I just never felt that she was fully realised. I enjoyed her friend Zara’s scenes more (fan of friend groups generally). Mixed feelings re the ending, and I’m not a fan of books that wrap up what everyone got up to for the next 10 years unless the whole book has been saga style, it just feels like the author needs to tell you where their characters ended up. But your mileage may vary on that.
Despite not loving it, I’d still recommend this as I do think Alix was a very interesting character in her own right and a great way of looking at “woke” racism and privilege.
My Review:
Such A Fun Age is a book that I had been hearing a lot about and was very intrigued by, particularly because of the recent discussions about racism in the Media. I have to say that this book wasn’t at all what I had been expecting, in a good way. Due to the hype surrounding it and the awards that it has won I was expecting a very deep, hard to read book when in fact the opposite was true. I really enjoyed this book and thought it was an intriguing, absorbing and thought provoking read.
The characters in this book were great creations that I enjoyed reading about even though I didn’t particularly warm to any of them. They were quite complex characters and I liked that the author gave the reader access to their thought process so we could understand more about where they were coming from. Alix was particularly baffling for me as on one side she seemed to be this very professional, together women but on the other seemed to only care about her looks and getting a teenage girl to like her. As a mother myself I really disliked her for her casual attitude towards her children particularly her eldest. I didn’t understand how a mother could act like that and some of the scenes involving this made me feel quite sick. Emira was probably my favourite character and I particularly liked her friends who seemed absolutely hilarious. Her relationship with Alix’s little girl warmed my heart and I loved how much she seemed to care about her. I didn’t like she put herself down so much for not having a career when she seemed happy and was pleased when she did stand up for herself about this.
It did take me a little while to get into the writing style of this book but once I was in I found the book very absorbing and hard to put down. I quickly found myself wrapped up in the lives of the character and I liked the way that the author kept changing my mind about whose side I was on. I had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next and which way things would go. I’m glad I read this as a buddy read as this book did raise a few questions for me and I was happy to have someone to discuss stuff with. For this reason I think it would make a great book club read as there would be lots to discuss.
Huge thanks to Bloomsbury Publishers for giving me a copy of this book via Netgalley and to Bethan for buddy reading this book with me.
About The Author:
Kiley Reid earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded the Truman Capote Fellowship and taught undergraduate creative writing workshops with a focus on race and class. Her short stories have been featured in Ploughshares, December, New South, and Lumina. Reid lives in Philadelphia.
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