REBECCA, NOT BECKY

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.