Caroline Builta's Reviews > A Good Neighborhood

In an upper middle-class neighborhood in North Carolina, Valerie is preparing for her incredibly gifted biracial son, Xavier, to head off to college in a few short months. Valerie, who is a professor of forestry and ecology, spends many of her days tending to her garden and admiring the beautiful old oak tree in the family’s yard. Everything is as it should be until a new family - the Whitmans - move into the house behind them, knocking down all of the trees on the lot to build themselves a McMansion. The Whitmans are determined to provide what they believe is the best they can for their teenage daughter, Juniper, and younger daughter, Lily. These two families quickly come to conflict - first, over the damage that’s been done to Valerie’s oak tree, but before long, over the puppy love shared between the two teenagers.

This is a new all-time favorite for me. I cried through the last 50 pages and absolutely sobbed through the last 5. I can’t remember the last time I loved a book so much! The book beautifully tackled the big concepts of class and race, while also painting intimate portraits of love, both familial and romantic. All of the characters are well-written, but the way Fowler gets in the heads of Xavier and Juniper is really the beating heart of this book. Written in the first person plural, Fowler does a great job of capturing the varying perspectives of the extremely tight-knit community. I loved this book and wish I could read it for the first time all over again!