This Side of Home

This book takes on so many issues - school inequities, gentrifications of neighborhoods, the difficulties of trying to grow up in a dysfunctional family, the pressures of other people's expectations, friendship vs. love, inter-racial relationships and even a principal who is not above skirting the

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rules to further his agenda for the school. There was so much here that it wasn't possible to do justice to everything. So, in the end, none gets explored in any depth.

For example, we hear a couple of times how black residents of the neighborhood (and nationally) can't get loans to start businesses, but white outsiders are able to and come set up in the historically black neighborhood. There's a passing mention that now there are stores and restaurants available where there weren't any before, and the neighborhood is safer. One twin focuses on the new options available to her while the other boycotts the new stores because they're owned by whites she sees as encroaching on opportunities that should have been there for local residents. So there are two completely opposite reactions with no real nuance. Yes, teens tend to see things in black and white, so it's an appropriate reaction for these girls, but it leaves the reader without a good sense of the complexities of the issue.

Don't get me wrong. It's a good book and worth reading. The characters are likable and the story is believable. But it takes on too many issues and doesn't do justice to any of them.

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City gentrification as told by Maya, an African American high schooler, when her old hood becomes upscale. Written with credibility by a black woman. I want Lindsey to read it.

Five stars a million times over.

Maya is a senior in high school, and she's having to deal with a lot of changes in her life. Her best friend and twin sister seem to be questioning the plans they'd all made together for their college lives. Her formerly mostly black neighborhood is undergoing gentrification and turning into a

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place that no longer feels like it belongs to her. And then there's her growing attraction towards the white boy who just moved in across the street.

The writing here definitely has that slightly choppy feel that seems to practically define YA novels these days, and that I've always found very slightly off-putting. And much of the dialog doesn't seem particularly likely to come out of the mouths of real teenagers. But the characters and their situations do feel realistic, and the social issues at the heart of the story are approached in a nuanced and warm-hearted way. Ultimately, it's not just about race or about gentrification, but about having an identity both as an individual and as a member of a community.

I'm not exactly in the target audience for this, being long past my teens (and, as noted above, not entirely thrilled with YA writing styles), but it worked for me, regardless, and I think I would recommend it to actual teenagers.

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Moved a little slow for me, so I kept putting it down and picking it up again. As always, Renee Watson has nuanced ideas about the most important issues of our time; these characters just felt a little too much like mouthpieces for ideas rather than real people.