[ 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!

Thanks to Kensington Books for the free advance copy.

Meg is a hand-letterer who makes custom planners, wedding invites, and more for her clients. One day, an old client, Reid, returns to her shop, demanding to know how Meg knew his marriage would fail - he had noticed how Meg weaved the word MISTAKE into the art in his wedding program. A conversation turns into a walk turns into sign-finding games turns into...more?

LOVE LETTERING is for all of us who love a classic rom com. If you liked EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER or THE AUSTEN PLAYBOOK, you need this book. It's a relatively slow burn for a romance novel - not even any kissing until halfway through! - but that only adds to the realness of this story. It reads like you're actually watching two people feel each other out and fall in love slowly, then all at once.

What I loved most about this book is how Meg's job as a hand-letterer is so integral to the story. It's not the type of book where the heroine owns a small business but never seems to actually do any work. It's her passion and she's good at it, and the plot would fall apart without it.

I also loved the descriptions of how Meg sees letters in her everyday life. She's always spelling out words in her head and rolling them around in her mind, feeling out each letter. It adds, dare I say it, whimsy to the story, and gives you such a great look into the mind of an artist.

The circus arrives without warning. Open only at night, entirely black and white, and full of beautiful, one of a kind performers. What guests - and some of the performers - don't know is that the circus is a forum for a battle between two contestants chosen as children, yet even they don't quite know the rules or parameters of play. Celia and Marco circle each other, adding tents and controlling bits of the circus. The two opponents fall deeply in love, and must find a way to end the game without causing each other's death.

Wow, this book! I can see why some people don't like it - it moves very slowly, and in fact, there's not really very much of a plot at all. But if you're willing to read a book that is mostly atmosphere, this is the one. Get it now.

Everything in this book is so beautiful. I loved the descriptions of the circus and the insides of the tents Celia and Marco created. I loved the midnight dinners and tarot readings and impossible clocks. It was all so lush and glorious.

And to top it all off, a love story for the ages. I was rooting so hard for them and was prepared to weep at the end of the novel. I maybe still got a bit misty, but mostly only because I cannot actually visit the circus for myself.

Juliet, born and raised in the Bronx, is going to Portland to take an internship with superstar writer Harlowe Brisbane, author of the hottest new book on feminism and owning your womanhood. Right before she leaves, Juliet comes out to her family as a lesbian, and it does not go well. But she's gotta get on that plane, and hopefully her summer with Harlowe will help her find her badass queer self.

This book is, to quote Roxane Gay, fucking outstanding. Juliet is immediately a fully realized character and she explodes off the page. Harlowe is just...perfect. She's every white feminist who thinks she's completely rid herself of racism. This book covers every last battle within third wave feminism and it leaves no one unscathed.

I think whether you are looking to see your identity or identities represented on the page, or are looking to be a better white ally, or are just looking for a bomb-ass book about being your own powerful self, you must read this book.

Wealthy society woman Sara is a writer known for deeply researching her novels about the underbelly of London. While preparing her latest book, she makes an undercover visit to Derek Craven's high end gambling den. Sara finds herself shaken by Derek's magnetism, perhaps even enough to leave her much more socially acceptable suitor back home.

Okay, who's ready for a hot take on a book from 1994?! DREAMING OF YOU was so promising. I loved the premise and the chemistry between Sara and Derek was great - it's a fantastic forbidden love story. The gambling hall was a rich setting, and all the supporting characters were snappy and interesting.

However, this really fell apart for me in the last quarter or so of the book, after Sara and Derek got together because he turned into an outright abuser. Virtually all he says to her is some variation of "you're never allowed to leave me now," often while painfully gripping her arm. Every time they have sex, she is nervous or scared about some aspect of it and tells him "no" and "stop" and he ignores her and does what he wants anyway. So that's a no from me.

As a side note, I looked at the negative reviews on Goodreads to see if other readers flagged this, but every bad review is about how Derek slept with someone else when Sara went back home and how they can't possibly abide a cheating hero. (Not to be all "they were on a break" but they weren't even together at that point? I don't know, that's another discussion entirely.)

TRICK MIRROR is a collection of essays about how various aspects of the modern world - specifically, the internet and social media - have shaped how the millennial generation sees themselves.

I've never read anything that so perfectly crystallizes the experience of my generation growing up with the full internet available to us and the way it's not only warped our sense of self but our sense of the world as a whole. A lot of pop culture essays can be light and forgettable, but Tolentino's work is dense. Deeply researched and full of supporting details, she paints a picture that is both specific to her life experiences and common to many young Americans.

And Tolentino is not just pointing out what's wild in our current internet culture. She's investigating it and interrogating it, finding threads that connect our childhoods to our teenhoods to our adulthoods. I think in particular the essay about scams puts words to something true that's always been a bit undefinable to me.

But wow, her essay "Ecstasy" might actually be one of the best essays I've ever read in my life. Get this book now.