[ thanks to whoever brought this ARC to a book swap for the free advance copy! ]

Emira Tucker is a young black woman who babysits for the Chamberlains, a rich white family, as a side gig while she tries to figure out what she wants to do with her life. When an emergency arises at the Chamberlains’ house one night, mom Alix asks Emira to take toddler Briar for a walk around the grocery store while the police are present. Almost immediately, store security questions whether Emira is kidnapping Briar, and a bystander catches it all on tape.

SUCH A FUN AGE weaves together so many threads about race and class - white saviorism, guilt about being a working parent, shame about trying to make ends meet while your friends succeed, the ethics of hiring household staff, fetishization of black culture, and more. Somehow, Reid incorporates all these thorny issues into a book that reads quickly and breezily - I could not put it down.

I really loved Emira. I loved that she was trying to find her way at 25 but was still confident in a lot of things about herself. She had a lot of people telling her how to live her life, and she shook them all off to do what she knew was best for her.

I was especially intrigued by how so many characters in this book were shown to be simultaneously right and wrong. Each accused others in completely accurate ways but weren't clean of it all themselves, whether they realized and accepted that or not (sorry for the clunky vagueness, I'm trying to avoid spoilers).

Also, and this is a really small thing, but SUCH A FUN AGE is the rare book that incorporates modern technology - Venmo, Instagram, etc. - without seeming tryhard and corny. That's tougher to pull off than you think!