Such a Fun Age

Extremely readable, even In These Times where I'm finding focusing on a book more difficult than before. Loved Emira and her friends and all the various tensions between them, loved the alternating POVs between Emira and Alix. I find it fascinating that this is a Reese Witherspoon book club pick when Alix is essentially a character Reese Witherspoon has played a couple of times before, just taller and a little younger than current-day Reese. There's so many currents and tensions playing themselves out in this - race, class (oh my god, I really want to read an essay about class in this novel), gender, age - it's incredible. Also, Kelley is such good satire of that exact type of dude. His last text to Emira made me both cackle because it was so perfect and want to throw my phone because of course. Perfect.

Rating is probably more like a 3.5, but rounding up. Reasons for the deduction: I feel like the book didn't quite stick the landing with the big live TV interview and I found the reveal at the very end (the flashback to Alix in high school and the locker cleanout) kind of pointless? Also, at one point, the narrative seems to suggest that Alix is overweight/out of shape at 5'10", 141 pounds (yeah, it uses exact numbers), and like. That's borderline underweight, and I know Alix is insecure about absolutely everything but maybe let's not endorse that viewpoint. There's also a scene earlier than that about how her friends tell her she's overweight, but if these are the numbers, again this isn't a great thing to throw in there.