One of Our Kind (2024) is bestselling YA author Nicola Yoon’s adult fiction debut, so I was very much looking forward to it, and I was not disappointed. That being said, a quick scan of some of the Goodreads reviews told me my opinion was in no way universal–many people did not like it at all. I think it will inspire strong feelings in anyone who reads it.
Jasmyn is a public defender, a black woman, who with her husband, King, and kindergarten-aged son, has just moved into a new home in Liberty, a small suburb on the edge of Los Angeles. Liberty is billed as a black utopia–the houses are large and all of the businesses are black-owned. King has been pushing to move there since his boss and mentor essentially founded it, and they have been doing well enough to afford moving there.
Jasmyn is, of course, greatly affected by current events, by the never-ending stream of killing of black people by police, and the hope is that by moving to Liberty, they can hold off on passing along some of their fear to their son, and to the new baby Jasmyn is pregnant with.
But something isn’t quite right. King spends a lot of time at the neighborhood spa, which is a new behavior for him, and it doesn’t seem like the usual health club or gym. Most of the neighbors seem detached, and she has a hard time making any new friends, which isn’t typical for her. She hits it off with her son’s teacher, though, so Jasmyn has that at least.
Yoon strings us along almost to the very end of the book before we find out exactly what’s happening, and it is terrifying. It’s social horror along the lines of the movie Get Out, brilliantly done, I thought.
I consider it weight-neutral, as there were no negative descriptions of fatness or overly positive descriptions of thinness.
Reading While Fat 