Friday Friyay: 'Such a Fun Age' by Kiley Reid

Happy Friday! It's been almost unbearably cold here, with temperatures of -7 Celsius during the day. Thankfully the university decided to turn the heating on for most of the day, so my fingers didn't quite freeze off in the office, but still, I look forward to it hopefully going above 0 at least after the weekend xD This weekend I'm also planning on doing absolutely nothing, except going to a friend's game night and reading. One book I've finally decided to get a copy of is Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. I've heard so much about this book, and now the time has come to read it for myself!

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, 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 things 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, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. Freda is taking a break at the moment, but we're keeping the spirit going! I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. 

BB:

'That night, when Mrs. Chamberlain called, Emira could only piece together the words "...take Briar somewhere..." and "...pay you double." 1%

Well, that's quite a phone call to only catch pieces of! Emira is at a party here, hence why she is only catching half of it, but I'm wondering how far into the story, kind of, we already are at this beginning. Like, is she already baby-sitting for them and this is an emergency? Are we going to flashback to how it all started? Maybe I'll just start reading now...

F56:

'Had someone told Tamra that Emira wanted to go to grad school? Because no one had told Emira. She'd gone to undergraduate school to figure out what she wanted to do ... wasn't graduate school for the student who had succeeded?' 56%

I can so absolutely imagine a situation like this because whenever I told people I was studying literature, especially medieval literature, they were like 'oh well that'll be really useful when you teach English' and I was like ... or not? Who said that was the goal? Only in my case I didn't have to fight up against any kind of class or race-judgement, only a judgement about the use of what I was interested in.

BBH:

This week's question comes from Billy himself:

How many books are on your "to be read" list?

Please don't make me reveal how many unread books I have on my NetGalley sheld *hides face in shame* I went absolutely overboard requesting books in 2021 and 2022 so I fell massively behind, even on books from earlier, so if we're counting NetGalley, a few hundred... If we're only looking at books I have on my TBR on Goodreads or StoryGraph, that's also a couple of hundred but there is no pressure there, no one is expecting me to read those and share my thoughts. I'm currently working on finding a balance in working on my backlog, while also reading books, like for example Such a Fun Age, which I've been wanting to read for a while. But yeah... I am quite ashamed of my NetGalley shelf, it's an absolute disaster. I'm working on it though!

What are you reading? And is your TBR list more under control than mine?