Review by Booklist Review
De'Andrea Whitman, a successful lawyer-turned-stay-at-home-mother, moves with her husband and five-year-old daughter to the upper-class town of Rolling Hills, Virginia, to be closer to De'Andrea's mother-in-law after an Alzheimer's diagnosis. The Whitmans, who have left their support system behind in Atlanta, soon discover that they are the only Black family in Rolling Hills. Their neighbor, Rebecca Myland, a white stay-at-home mom, is desperate to introduce racial diversity to the almost-all-white Parent Diversity Committee at Magnolia Country Day School and to make Black friends in the process. When Rebecca's daughter befriends De'Andrea's on the first day of kindergarten, Rebecca recruits De'Andrea for the committee. What follows is racial-justice reckoning through the points of view of the two Rolling Hills mothers who come together with a common cause and gain renewed perspectives on friendship, motherhood, and race. Rebecca, Not Becky is a timely confrontation of white privilege and an astute, at times humorous exploration of the conversations Americans are having surrounding race and racial justice, all through the lens of two mothers who are managing kindergarteners, marriages, and their own waylaid desires and dreams. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Building on the success of Christine Pride and Jo Piazza's cowritten novels, You Were Always Mine and We Are Not Like Them, this dual-perspective story is sure to find an enthusiastic audience.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Children's author Platt (the Frankie & Friends series) teams up with filmmaker Greene for an incisive story of two stay-at-home moms, one Black, one white, whose complex friendship roils their northern Virginia suburb. De'Andrea Whitman, a former lawyer, misses her old friends in Atlanta after moving to Rolling Hills, and has little interest in befriending the white mothers at her daughter's school. One of them, Rebecca Myland, means well ("Rebecca was NOT a Becky," the authors write with a mix of irony and sympathy, referencing the meme about angry racist white women), but she routinely and obliviously offends the few parents of color. De'Andrea's therapist picks up on De'Andrea's hostility toward white women and encourages her to befriend one. She begrudgingly agrees and accepts a Diversity Book Club invitation from Rebecca, though she ends up bonding instead with two Asian American women. Eventually, De'Andrea and Rebecca find common cause in an effort to remove a Confederate monument from a local park, and as their crusade reaches a boiling point, members of each of their families are affected in surprising ways. The authors carefully demonstrate how each of the protagonists is hampered by preconceived notions of the other, and the social satire smoothly evolves into a propulsive page-turner. Fans of Such a Fun Age ought to check this out. (Dec.)This review has been updated with further information.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two wealthy stay-at-home moms, one Black and one white, deal with the complexities of race. " 'Only three more weeks of being Black and bougie with my besties!' De'Andrea wailed. 'Then I'll be living among the Whites, and be stuck dealing with Karens and Beckys and all their caucasity!' " In order to be close to her mother-in-law in a high-end memory-care facility, former corporate lawyer De'Andrea Whitman and her ultra-hot, super successful husband, Malik, are moving to Rolling Hills, a gated community in Virginia where they will be the only Black people--except for the security guys working the gate. Her Atlanta friends later joke that the family they saw shopping during their tour with the realtor were "Negroes-for-Hire," staged to deceive them. Chapters alternate between De'Andrea, written in exuberant style, and the other protagonist, an earnest, anxious, to-do-list-obsessed white woman named Rebecca Myland. Not Becky, as she keeps reminding people--and, in fact, the pejorative meaning of the nickname doesn't fit her. She's well aware of her privilege even if her husband doesn't get it. She chairs the diversity committee at the nearly all-white elementary school and is about to lead a charge to remove a Confederate statue from the local park. She's eager to get De'Andrea involved, though De'Andrea would really rather not, and she's not dying to join Rebecca's book club, either--but her therapist has directed her to make at least one white friend in Rolling Hills, challenging De'Andrea to overcome her extremely unabashed distaste. Then the two women's daughters fall in mad kindergarten love and there's no stopping it--the distance between them must narrow. At its best when having savvy fun with stereotypes and the sub rosa operations of female social networks. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
