Such a Fun Age is a novel about transactional relationships, race, and making the right decisions. Emira is nearly twenty-six, about to lose her health insurance, and works as a babysitter for Alix Chamberlain, a wealthy white woman who built a brand around female confidence. One night, Alix asks Emira to take two-year-old Briar to an upmarket supermarket whilst they deal with a situation at home, but whilst there Emira is confronted by a security guard who thinks Emira has kidnapped Briar. In the aftermath, Emira deals with the fact a bystander filmed the moment and Alix desires to help Emira but doesn't know how, and things are complicated when Emira meets someone from Alix's past.

This is a clever novel that looks at the ways interpersonal relationships work and how they can be seen differently by the people involved, using Emira and Alix's viewpoints to unfold the narrative but also get across the gulf between how they view their lives. Emira is a complex and relatable character, aimless but given purpose by the bond she has formed with Briar whilst babysitting, particular as Alix ignores her eldest daughter in favour of her younger one. This relationship formed of necessary mirrors the way Alix desperately wants to be friend with Emira, all whilst Emira isn't really aware of this fact. Reid writes the characters and situations carefully to show not only how Alix tries to be a 'white saviour', but how Emira views her actions and ultimately uses it to work out what she wants. Summary-style endings can be a let down, but in this case it feels important to cast a look at what happens to the characters after the events of the main narrative.

Such a Fun Age is social commentary with gripping character and a protagonist who you really want the best for, and is being quite rightfully hyped as a book that shines a light on power and race in a fresh, sharp way.

I had seen this book everywhere on social media and was really glad to see I had been accepted to recieve an advanced copy. This book was excellent. It was a powerful and insightful read that touched on an important (political) message in a way that didn't bore the reader. Emira was a fantastic character and really stuck with me after I had read the book. I would really love to see this onscreen.

This was an excellent debut novel. Alix Chamberlain runs her own business and has a small daughter. One night, there is an incident involving the police and Alix phones her part-time babysitter, Elmira, to take the little girl out for a while. They go to a supermarket, but Elmira is confronted by a security guard and accused of kidnapping the child – simply because she is black, and the child is white.

Race, class, and gender are all covered, and in a realistic and sympathetic way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing plc for an advance reader copy in return for an honest review.

Wow wow wow. Such A Fun Age was my first read of the year and it did not disappoint. •
Such A Fun Age is the story of Emira, a young black woman who is unsure of what to do with her life and so in the meantime she babysits for the whimsical and truly fabulous Briar. The story starts with a simple favour which ends up with Emira defending herself to a store security guard because another customer, a white customer, is filled with faux concern for Briar. •
The repercussions of that evening filter out through the book and ultimately come to a head in a messy ending. •
The way that Reid addresses everyday racism is astounding. So often, books about racism are about the extremes and so it’s so refreshing to read a book that shows the mundanity of everyday racism. How it’s ingrained in our society so deep that you don’t even notice it. We think because we vote for the ‘right’ people and we have black friends that we no longer say the wrong thing or address people in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable, in a way that is racist. •
I thoroughly enjoyed Such A Fun Age. It’s truly a read for our generation. Every year I have a book that I gift to people in an effort to expand their reading and elaborate our conversations, in 2018 it was The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair, in 2019 it was Milk and Honey and for 2020, it will be this. Read it. It’s important

What a stunning debut Such a fun Age is. Only into the first month of 2020 and I’ve already discovered a book that will be hard to surpass in terms of sheer readability. With a strong, bright,sassy young woman as the lead character, I couldn’t put this book down.
Emira is part time baby sitter to Briar Chamberlain whose parents Peter and Alix are part of the wealthy white elite of Philadelphia. As a poor black woman working two jobs to survive they couldn’t be more different. When Emira is accused late one night of ‘stealing’ Briar whilst they are browsing the market depot store, this is the catalyst for the unfolding drama that has much to say about race and prejudice and class and privilege that exists in society today.
Without divulging the storyline and rehashing the synopsis, Such a fun age is full of unexpected surprises that had me turning the pages, with the dynamics between Alix and Emira shifting from the privileged employer/employee relationship to one where Alix is desperate to befriend Emira and champion the cause for the underdog. But not for the right reasons!
The love Emira has for her young charge grabs you from the start; their relationship is a joy behold since it’s apparent Briar is an odd little girl with such an enquiring mind and requires much patience and attention that her own mother seems unwilling/unable to provide. Emira is fulfilling her role of surrogate mummy with aplomb and in her own style. She might be broke and lacking in ambition but she’s clearly someone you’d want fighting your battles with you. Loyal, honest and bursting with love she’s worth more than the likes of Alix many times over;Alix is cold, selfish and only concerned with outward appearances in the way that the privileged can be. The conversations between Emira and Briar are brilliantly imagined,their bond so evident, making it incredibly easy to love both these characters.
Themes also explored encompass friendship (the difference between Emira’s girlfriends and Alix’s is stark) as well as motherhood and marriage.
The ending isn’t how I’d imagined which makes it all the more realistic. Sad and yet inevitable (no spoilers here!) but Emira is a character who will linger in your thoughts long after the last page has been read.
I predict Such a Fun Age to make a huge impact when it hits the shelves and defy anyone not to enjoy this. Without a doubt this storyline is thought provoking
and an absolute pleasure to read.
My thanks as always to the author and publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read in exchange for an honest review.

This book wasn't quite what I expected.
The synopsis obviously indicated a seriousness that the cover and title don't suggest. However, I thought that the main "incident" - i.e. Emira, a young black woman being stopped in the supermarket when she is babysitting a white child and the whole incident being filmed - would be a central part of the book.

Instead, we deviate a little from that and delve into the relationships and dynamics of a few key characters; namely the mother of the child, Mrs Chamberlain, the babysitter Emira and the man who filmed the incident, Kelley.
Obviously, we do return to the incident but not in a way I expected and I was left guessing in the final part of the book.

I absolutely loved the "voices" of the chatacters, particularly Emira and the child Briar. The voices were so authentic and I could hear them loud and clear in my head.

The book confronts some very complex issues and does so in a sensitive but realistic manner.

I loved that there are so many strong female protagonists and supporting characters.

What I didn't love was the ending. I felt that both Emira and Alix were somehow left wanting after the events of the book. It felt a tiny bit rushed to summarise what happened to both of them after.

I also didn't love the fact that working in childcare is never seen as a viable option for Emira as a career, even though she is so very good at it and clearly drawn to it. Women don't need to be in corporate or "high flying" careers to be successful but there feels like a tiny element of that seeps in here. Emira seems to be constantly comparing herself to her more successful friends and I don't think thats a good thing between women (even though we do all do it from time to time, I just didn't like seeing it in Emira).

A very thought provoking book that I will be recommending.

The novel starts with Emira - a black babysitter for privileged white toddler, Briar Chamberlain - being challenged in a store about supposedly kidnapping that child. Emira deals with it with dignity but the scene is videoed by a bystander and there are far-reaching consequences.
It’s an intriguing start. The novel goes on to explore the relationship between Emira and her employer Alix - a complicated inter-racial and inter-class relationship that also involves a mutual boyfriend.
I didn’t always feel drawn in by it but it’s a well-written novel with strong dialogue and is easy to read and feels real.
It also feels very topical and relevant and I’ve no doubt it will be the big hit it deserves.

Really enjoyed this - great writing, almost impossible to put down! Utterly believable characters and scenarios

Such a fun book!

Such a great book to kick off the year with.I'd heard a lot about Such a Fun Age before I started reading it and it absolutely lived up to the hype.

Characters were drawn so well - I loved the split POV and the relationship between Briar and Emira (I totally shed a tear at the end).

Believe the hype. Such A Fun Age is one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the year. It was incredible wit, humour and shurde dialogue that makes it an unstoppable force. It’s a novel all about privilidge, entitlement and social standing. The book has fantastic dialogue and the interchanging winners and loosers. Falling in and out of love, freindships coming and going and ownership. Does the nanny have any rights? Does she have a say? When is enough, enough and when does it verge on a play on race. A novel that will rightly get plaudits and will be on of the best books of 2020.

I read this in one sitting, flying through the parallel stories of a babysitter and the woman she works for. I don’t know why but I had expected something fluffier than this book about race and class and was very pleasantly surprised. I would also read an entire book of three year old Briar’s wisdom, if Reid is looking for a new project!

Such a Fun Age was unexpected. I can't say I truly liked it, but at the same time I thought it was very good. There were a lot of character descriptions that didn't make sense to me until the end, so at the time I thought it was poor character building. But when we see everyone's true colours during the final events I can see what Reid was leading up to. And the pay off was brilliant.

I was a little disappointed in Emira who often could be so eloquent kind of letting herself down during the interview at the end. She could have called out some real bullshit right then, but I must suppose that she was just so frustrated at being used and manipulated that she just wanted out.

It was a really fascinating look into the way that white people use and abuse Black people and other POC, while thinking that they're the ones who are *not* racist. This was brilliantly explored during a showdown near the end. As a white woman it's certainly going to make me think about my place in the world and the consequences of my actions in the future.

A piercing commentary on race, the complexities of transactional relationships and.the anxieties of all young women about careers, love and life. But what really engages the reader is the simple portrayal of the most charming little girl and her sitter's feelings for her. A book to enjoy on so many levels.

This could just be me but I was expecting a lot more from this book than I got. The start read very much like a young adult with parts of the commentary very immature. The characters I couldn't get along with Alix , a spoilt materialistically contrite character who for her age seemed very naive, with trivial matters initially bothering her little bubble- your white privilege. Emira, the babysitter in contrast, dealing with a lot of issues due to her race and upbringing though allowed me an insight into the struggles she faced, her indecisiveness about her life did irk me. The whole social construct of the story does make you question yourself as well as make you aware of your own moral compass, but the execution of the story was chaotic and in some parts confusing. The dynamic of the book does change to a more serious note near the end but at this point I wasn't engrossed in it.
Overall it's a book that does have a strong point to make I just felt the story itself could have been cleaner.

This book is fantastic.
It will make you look at yourself and the people around you in the best (most uncomfortable) way. This book is topic, relevant, gritty and addictive.
100% recommend.

This isn’t an easy book to read. Such a Fun Age looks at two women caring for Briar, a little girl just on the cusp of her third birthday as the novel opens. Emira is a young black woman who babysits for Briar three times a week. Alix Chamberlain, a rich white woman with her own business, is Briar’s mum.

The novel starts with an incident. Alix’s husband is a local news anchor. He makes a throwaway remark that is unintentionally, but nonetheless, racist during his broadcastand in response their window is egged - the glass smashed on impact - late at night. They decide to call the police and don’t want their two-year-old to witness the police coming so they call their sitter and ask her to take Briar for a little while.

Emira is at a birthday party for a friend and is dressed for a night out. She explains she’s had a drink and isn’t dressed for babysitting, but Alix is desperate and so she goes right over and takes Briar to the local grocery store that, thankfully, is still open. Briar likes to look at nuts and smell tea bags and Emira is happy to indulge her.

Emira arrives with her friend Zara and with Briar’s encouragement all three girls have a little dance in the store to a song on Zara’s phone. A man at the supermarket claps and Zara heads off, leaving Emira and Briar to themselves.

Then the security guard comes and questions Emira. He doesn’t believe that she should be out this late with a young child clearly not her own and he’s worried about the child’s safety. An older white woman reported their dancing to him and even though Emira reassures him of who she is, the woman and the guard talk over her, addressing all their questions to the two-year-old, clearly believing that a black woman in a revealing outfit shouldn’t be in charge of a white girl at this time of night.

The man who had clapped their dancing, films the whole altercation on his phone, as Emira finally has to call Mr Chamberlain, ‘an old white guy’ to sort it all out. The man who filmed the incident claims - as do the Chamberlains - that Emira should sue the store for being racially prejudiced. He says Emira can have the film, share it, get compensation, but Emira doesn’t want the spotlight and wants to just shrug off the night’s events. In response, the man sends her the film and deletes it from his own phone. That video is hers to do with as she wishes.

That night, that white man with the phone, and that video become the fulcrum point for the whole of the unfolding narrative that painfully unravels Alix’s privilege, not only of race but of affluence. It makes for awkward and difficult reading. Emira loves Briar. So does Alix. But their ability to express that love, to nurture and encourage Briar, their priorities in regard to her growth, are put sharply under the spotlight. Around this centre stage shadows from that night and from the more distant past begin to deepen. What happened in Alix’s past? Why is she so desperate suddenly to befriend her sitter? Who is the white man from the grocery store and why is he significant? Did he really delete that video?

The plot is gripping; the unravelling of racial and financial prejudice is meticulous and cleverly nuanced. It’s not easy to read but the pace of the unfolding plot keeps you going. I can’t say I enjoyed reading it, but it does explore the complexity of money and race in American society in ways that make you want to check your own privilege more closely. It is also as generous as it is searing - no mean feat.

I was keen to read Such a Fun Age from reading the synopsis alone and it was a great read.

The novel opens with a bang and I was completely drawn in and keen to follow the stories of Emira and Alix thorughout. Kiley Reid explores race, class, feminism and privilege in great detail in this book and it is a testament to her writing that I wanted to keep reading in spite of the fact that I found reading the book to be uneasy at times. Alix tries to make up for the incident in the supermarket throughout the book and her scenes were often uncomfortable to read as she didn't seem to consider Emira in this or what Emira would think.

Emira's interactions with Alix's daughter, Briar, were sweet and it was evident that she had a great relationship with her. This was one of my favourite parts of the book.

I will be honest and admit that I didn't 'love' the ending and I thought parts of it were quite slow. However, this did not put me off reading the book and I really enjoyed Such a Fun Age. I would recommend this book and look forward to reading Kiley Reid's next novel.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury UK and NetGalley for my e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am always intrigued by an insightful debut novel and Such A Fun Age was pitched as ‘a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege’, which put Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie in mind. So I was very excited when I was accepted for it on NetGalley.

The novel follows 25-year-old babysitter Emira Tucker, who is about to be kicked off of her parents’ health insurance when she reaches her 26th birthday, if she doesn’t find a ‘grown-up’ job with benefits. She works for the glamorous Alix Chamberlain, whose mission to empower young women everywhere leaves her unable to take care of her two-year-old daughter Briar, which Emira is only too happy to do. When Emira is confronted by a security guard in a supermarket while looking after Briar one night, Alix is determined to do everything she can to help make things right. Then Emira begins dating someone new and an unexpected link is made between the two women that threatens to undo everything.

As a woman in her late twenties who has never been particularly ambitious, it has been a while since I related to a character as much as I relate to Emira. For the past few years, so many contemporary novels have been driven by young go-getting women with an active agenda of bettering themselves professionally. While they’re very inspirational and great fun to read, I’ve never found them very relatable. I’d actually like to thank Reid for finally representing the girls who just want a happy simple life and not much else.

Almost the entire plot is driven by racial difference and there is so much wise and profound social commentary. I’ve read a few books that focus on contemporary black issues and my eyes are opened a little wider each time. At one point, Emira is considering her future with her boyfriend Kelley. She knows that as a white person, it wouldn’t cross his mind to educate their children on the things that would affect them as mixed-race people, which is a huge indication of how different their experience of life and the world is.

The book also explores the question of what family is and the difficulties of bringing an outsider into it. As a life-long privileged person, Alix has always had help around the house and she likes to consider those that work for her as family. After the incident at the supermarket, Alix is so ashamed that she spends most of the first half of the book trying to absorb Emira into the family unit. However noble her intentions seem, she makes several misjudgements and fails to notice the inherent differences between what she wants and what’s best for Emira. During an exchange with Briar, Emira points out that families always consist of people who are essentially equal. She is smart enough to know that she couldn’t possibly be a true part of the family because of her position and the fact that her skin colour means she isn’t considered a true equal.

Emira’s relationship with Briar is one of my favourite aspects of the book. The chatty, curious two-year-old is hilarious and the conversations that Emira has with her are so heart-warming. The final chapter brought tears to my eyes when I realised that Briar is, of course, forever changed for the better because of the time she spent with Emira. She’ll always have a part of her babysitter with her throughout her life, even though she may not necessarily remember her. This gives a strong bittersweet flavour to the ending, which is otherwise incredibly triumphant and satisfying.

Such A Fun Age is a fantastic mature coming-of-age story that actually has the pace and tone of a thriller in places. It’s a charming, thoughtful debut that I couldn’t put down -ideal for fans of clever, contemporary fiction.

I still don’t really know how to review this one. I don’t read a lot of contemporary but there was something so intriguing about the synopsis of ‘Such A Fun Age’, that I knew I had to give it a try.

The first chapter was fantastic! It roped me in right away, and I could not stop reading. A truly strong opening for this debut novel. Overall, it remained fairly compulsive for the first half of the book. However, sooner or later, it fell apart for me.

This book follows two characters, Emira and Alex. Emira is a young, black babysitter - working for Alix, and generally trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Alix is a wealthy social media star and writer - who is insecure and has her own struggles, yet hides these facts from everyone in her life.

After Emira is confronted by a security guard in a shop, and accused of kidnapping - both of their lives change. Alix, along with Kelley (a witness of the incident) think that Emira should report the incident and generally try to support her throughout this story.

Overall, this story is a simple contemporary. After the first quarter, it really slowed down and became much less interesting for me to listen to. I didn’t like any of the characters much, and didn’t connect with much of what was happening throughout. Aside from some provocative moments scattered throughout, this felt like a run-of-the-mill contemporary novel.

This certainly felt as though it was a critic of the idea of the ‘white-saviour’. However, the author definitely fleshes out her characters and gives them all positive and negative attributes. That being said, I really didn’t enjoy the result of Alix’s character. I felt as though the earlier writing of her was smart and suggestive and the idea that she didn’t see her problematic actions and she was oblivious to this was very thought-provoking. The end led her character to a more stereotypical place and I didn’t enjoy that as much.

Overall, I did enjoy this one, but I was left wanting more. If you’re intrigued by the synopsis I would give it a go, as, if nothing else, it was an interesting character study of two very different women.

Thank you to Bloomsbury for a review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I’m afraid I couldn’t really connect with any of the characters in this, so, struggled to maintain any interest.

It’s a well written debut novel about race, privilege and class and made some interesting observations. But, overall, I found it plodding and slow.

I’m probably in the minority and I’m sure there’s a solid audience for this genre. I wish the author every success and am grateful to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview. It’s just not a book for me.