(4,5 ✨)
This book gave me such mixed signals throughout the entire 300 pages.

It's written in this fun, carefree way, making this an enjoyable read but the topic ranges from light baby talk to racism. The way this book is written takes the heat off the heavy talks, but for a book that revolves around a black girl and two white persons with definitive issues surrounding race, it's a little too fun. I've never seen both sides of racism discussed in such a way before. In total honesty, I never really thought about it in that way as portrayed in the book. The ending was very anti-climatic in my experience; I was really hoping they would talk about it or that Emira would at least admit to knowing about it.

I liked the characters, for the most part. They all seemed very thought out and completed, and I never got to a moment that I felt like was out of character, but my oh my, how much Alix annoyed the living crap out of me.
She is so whiny. She hates the fact she lives in Philadelphia, she hates that her babysitter isn't her property (as we see on Thanksgiving), and she really doesn't give two thoughts to her older daughter.

I'm putting this down for 4,5 stars because I cringed so hard at any pop culture reference. "Umm, das weird," "oop," and so on. This doesn't interfere with the story at all, so it might be a bit unfair of me to kick it down to 4,5 stars. However, my reasoning is that I had to take an actual minute or two from the book to get over it. There are also so many unnecessary details, I have no interest in reading about some woman putting an egg yolk on her food or someone salting her dish?! Just why?