He urges her to use the footage to get the guy fired. Outside the store a well-meaning white guy named Kelley, who had tried intervening and who had filmed the event on his phone, approaches Emira. Still, just as you are ready to exhale, Reid illuminates how, even without a drawn gun, these everyday incidents have deep ripples. Instead, Emira is saved by the arrival of Briar’s father – only a white male can get the guard to listen. But this doesn’t escalate into cliched, ripped-from-the headlines violence. When the security guard reaches for Emira’s phone as she calls the Chamberlain house, she defensively snarls that he’s “not even a real cop” and he calls for backup.

The showdown builds quickly and suspensefully. And yes, dear reader, you are implicated in this too. It sets in motion a plot that reveals how trapped black people who work in service jobs for white people feel, how easily privileged whites – who would protest any claims of prejudice – can fetishize blacks, or fail to see them as fully three-dimensional humans. When her phone rings, it’s not a booty call, but rather a late-night emergency babysitting assignment from Alix Chamberlain. This buzzy new novel (already optioned for a film) is set mostly in Philadelphia and opens with Emira Tucker dressed up and drinking for a friend’s birthday. (There’s a detailed description of a $234 leather jacket.) But those surface sparkles are secondary to the book’s far weightier currents: an exploration of race and racism and misguided perceptions of the issue, executed with wit and a sharp edge.

Add in fizzy writing about food, wine, and clothing, plus snappy chatter and gossip with for each woman with her friends, and the book sounds like a beach read. The two protagonists of Kiley Reid’s debut novel, “Such a Fun Age,” are an upscale 33-year-old married mother of two clutching to her pre-mom identity, and her 25-year-old babysitter, who parties with her girlfriends while trying to figure out how to really start her life.

Such a fun age review