Although just a year apart in age, Happi and Kezi Smith aren't close. Kezi is an activist YouTuber with a hundred thousand or so subscribers, and Happi mostly wants to be left alone. And then she is. Kezi dies in police custody, and Happi, their family, and Kezi's closest friends have to figure out what to do with their grief. Happi and Kezi's oldest sister, Genny, proposes the surviving sibs and friends follow a route Kezi had planned to take over the summer, one that utilizes an old copy of The Green Book. They have a physical copy but also give props to the Schomburg Center's digitized Green Book collection.

There is a lot going on in One of the Good Ones, which as much as anything takes on the idea that some Black people deserve to die less than others. Kezi is a star student, a YouTube star, and a preacher's kid. She has a secret or two, but generally, to the public, she is "one of the good ones." The Moulite sisters want readers to understand that, all Black lives matter.

They deemed her One of the Good Ones. Sometimes the phrasing was different--A Nice Kid, A Child with Promise--but the intent was always the same: this little girl was worth listening to because look how composed she was! If we read her report card, we would see all As. If we spoke to any of her teachers, they'd call her a star student. Her father, Jamal Coleman, immortalized on the internet, if not in the history books, took her to church every Sunday. The cognitive dissonance of it all was something I couldn't take. If I had been the one to die that day in the hands of police instead of my sister--what would they have said about me? I skipped school like I was allergic to desks? I got messy drunk at parties? I could have been a better sibling and daughter? And though that was all true, should those facts have any bearing on whether the world was livid at the injustice of my death or mourned for me? For Jamal Coleman? For Kezi? All the rest?

The story is told in more than one voice, and it may take a minute to really get who's who and what's going on, but even so, OotGO is an accessible and compelling read. It's about police violence and white silence, but it's also about one family working through their problems, and occasionally joys, even when processing a tragedy. And it's surprising, too!