There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. The plot moves too fast for substantial character growth on Zuri’s part, and some elements feel contrived, but these flaws don’t spoil a book which is not only a retelling, but an examination of timely issues, including class, blackness, and intraracial prejudice.
The ending, both realistic and bittersweet, is a culmination of the book’s examination of the costs of gentrification. While Darius’ attraction to Zuri makes sense, Zuri’s doesn’t seem to move beyond his physical attractiveness-odd for a character who’s otherwise thoughtful and complex. When poet Zuri unexpectedly runs into Darius at an open mic, she begins to rethink her assessment of him, and the two, as expected, fall for each other.
She opts instead for Warren, the brothers’ classmate and a boy who feels familiar. The Darcy brothers are handsome, but Zuri thinks Darius Darcy’s a snob.
She doesn’t love the gentrification changing her hood, “like my face and body when I was in middle school-familiar but changing right before my eyes.” So when the rich Darcy family moves into the expensive renovated house across the street, she’s skeptical even though they’re also black. Zuri, or ZZ from the Block, loves her big, loud Haitian-Dominican family. Seventeen-year-old Zuri Benitez deals with gentrification in her Brooklyn neighborhood and her own bias in this Pride and Prejudice remix.
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