“I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like… happens.”

This was a really fun book on audio! I picked it up because the Novel Pairings podcast paired it with Emma. It’s been years since I’ve read Emma, and I have to say that I didn’t get Emma-vibes from it. What I got was The House of Mirth!

In this book, Emira is in her mid-20s and has cobbled together a life she’s quite happy with, other than the fact that she’s about to age out of her parents’ health insurance plan and is always broke. She has two part-time jobs: transcription and baby-sitting. She enjoys and is really good at both of them. Late one night she gets a call from the mom of the child she watches during the week: they’ve had to call the police because of an incident at their home and they don’t want Briar to witness the chaos. Alix asks Emira to take Briar to the grocery store to keep her occupied for a while. At the store, another shopper suspects Emira of kidnapping Briar and alerts security at the store. The whole incident is recorded on cell phone and the story catapults from there.

Alix is horrified by what happened and is even more horrified of the thought that she might be considered a racist. She and her friends try to take Emira under their wings and make her their pet project (okay, maybe this part is a little Emma-like). They can’t imagine that Emira might not want to be made over. And like in The House of Mirth, Alix and her friends seem so conniving and use Emira to raise their own profiles. The images of them sitting around together and plotting were a bit nauseating.

This book is full of train wrecks. I spent a lot of time with my eyes wide open and my hand over my mouth, just waiting for the inevitable uncomfortable moment. The narrator is excellent. She made the story and the characters come alive and I couldn’t stop listening. I’m so glad I finally took the plunge with this one!