A Good Neighborhood

Genre: Fiction

This is the story of Xavier and Juniper, both teenagers, both getting ready for their futures in college and the work force. Xavier is son to Valerie, an African American woman and his father, who has passed away, is white. Xavier is a musician and through focus and determination is getting ready to go to college to study music. Juniper is seventeen years old, daughter to Julia, a stay at home mom and Brad, an HVAC mogul who is her step-father. Julia and Brad build a monstrous home near Xavier and Valerie's modest home and the families aren't entirely sure they like each other. But the kids do. And then, one turn of the path, one choice leads to another and life for these two families become complicated and they will forever be entangled with each other- like it or not. This is a story of love, loss and choosing right from wrong.

I enjoyed many parts of this book. I wanted to come back to this story over and over to see how it ends. The themes of race and privilege and inequality are very strong and compelling in this story and are important to tell. However, there are two pieces of this book that I did not enjoy and I think detracted from a good story with an important message. The first is that that having a narrator in the story was not successful. I felt like the voice of the narrator was preachy and out of place. The second, and more important problem is that I think Fowler made a mistake with introducing pedophilia into the storyline. The message about race relations and privilege was convoluted by this part of the story and, I personally, was very uncomfortable with the character's inner monologue. I focused more on that than the fact that he is a racist. In this case, it was important that the author really focus on the message she wanted to relay through this story, and had she done so, she could have edited many parts of this and, I believe, created a stronger version.