Blurbed by the likes of Ocean Vuong and Jasmine Guillory, Bryan Washington’s follow-up to the 2019 story collection Lot is a fresh, vibrant love story that interweaves race, queerness, nationality, family, and intimacy with narrative ease. The novel centers around the Texan coupledom of Benson, a Black day-care teacher, and Mike, a Japanese American chef, skillfully chronicling the shift that occurs in the two young men’s relationship after Mike travels to Osaka to visit his estranged father—and Benson suddenly finds himself living with Mike’s acerbic mother, Mitsuko, in his absence. — Emma Spector
Fun is the operative word in Such A Fun Age, Kiley Reid’s delectably discomfiting debut. The novel takes a thoroughly modern approach to the timeless upstairs-downstairs trope, centering on a black babysitter watching over a white influencer’s two-year-old daughter. From the opening scene, in which 25-year-old Emira Tucker is apprehended by a supermarket security guard who suspects the nanny of having kidnapped the toddler, the spring-loaded tale charts a battle of best intentions. Told from alternating points of view, the tale loop-de-loops through vibrant vignettes set in reggaeton nightclubs and Philadelphia farmers’ markets before landing firmly on one side of the maternal divide. Woven into the cinematic fabric (Insecure star Lena Waithe has optioned motion picture rights) is a trenchant examination of race and privilege in late-stage capitalism. A former babysitter herself, Reid fills the narrative with ripped-from-the-shift details about the trappings of bougie lifestyle and the slippery intimacies that form in the space between family members and a $16-a-hour employee. This page-turner goes down like comfort food but there’s no escaping the heartburn. – Lauren Mechling
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