Set in the early nineties, The Black Kids story follows main character Ashley Bennett. For the most part of all of her life, living in gorgeous LA, she has been existing in an oblivious bubble, one that she shares with her friends, that’s given her a sheltered kind of perspective on the world. Her parents are quite wealthy, and partially because of them and the lifestyle they’ve built with her, she’s gotten used to life always being this way and not ever finding fault within it by ignoring quips and racist remarks, even in her daily life. It’s not until the end of her senior year, right before Summer can break, when everything changes. Four LAPD officers are exonerated from appallingly beating a Black man, Rodney King. As quickly as the tide kisses the shore, Ashley isn’t one of the girls anymore. She’s one of the Black kids. Labelled, overnight.

Protests accumulate fast, erupting in a kind of wildfire as LA burns literally. Ashley wants, and desperately needs, to continue her life as normal. She wants to stay in her bubble. But as her sister gets involved in the riots and put in danger, it gets harder to ignore what’s going on around her. But as she goes along with her best friends spreading a rumour that’s destructive about her Black classmate and her family unit starts to falter underneath the pressure, everything starts to fall onto Ashley’s shoulders. She no longer feels like she’s part of her friendship group, but doesn’t feel like one of the Black kids either.

Overall, The Black Kids is poignant and moving, a sort of book that I felt completely unable to forget it after the last page was turned. The history that’s woven into the story is painful, giving mirror images to what we all know is truth. I did like that Ashley’s character development grew over the course of the book, but didn’t agree with some of the weight based comments in the book, since I felt these weren’t needed/and didn’t add anything to the novel. Her character development toward the end definitely won me over, and she wasn’t as judgemental as her friends (who were a thousand times worse) but I feel like she wouldn’t say some of the things she did after her character grew.

What I did love was the passion behind the words, the way Christina’s writing seemed to build a 3D storyworld before my eyes, as if I could see it so vividly. Especially way that the novel explored so many aspects of racism, class, family, police violence, riots and protests – this was so needed, educational. And for the younger generation that might be confused about a lot of how racism has been carved into history all along, The Black Kids shows just how disastrous and hurtful this can be. I thoroughly loved The Black Kids and know this will be one of the best books of the year, one I hope is in hands of every YA reader. Huge four stars!

A very timely book. I didn't know much at all about the LA riots but reading about them whilst similar things are happening in the world nearly 20 years later is extremely sobering.

I liked Ash and I enjoyed this book. I think, plot and pace wise, the final third of the book is excellent. It's a slow burn that ignites on prom night. I would recommend this book to the teenagers I teach.

3.5 stars.

Set against the backdrop of the LA Riots following the acquittal of the police officers involved in the brutal beating of Rodney King, we meet Ashley as she wrestles with the divide between how black and white people are treated.

This book was so well written and had me completely engrossed. I am ashamed to say that I was some way through the book before I realised that the names of black people who had been murdered or assaulted referred were real people.

This book made for a really uncomfortable read as it is set almost 30 years and not a damn thing has changed since then.

The plot felt a little thin to me but beyond that a really great read.

The Black Kids is a book that everybody should read. Without question. I knew from chapter 3 that what I was reading was something special.

The Black Kids is historical fiction, albeit recent history, set in Los Angeles in 1992 against the backdrop of a city that is on fire in the wake of the Rodney King beating. The story follows Ashley, an affluent Black girl, and her family, as they are caugh up in the momentum of the ongoing riots.

Ashley goes to private school and all of her friends are white. Her friends call her an oreo, she laughs. Its a joke isn't it? The other Black Kids at her school are there on scholarship, all from the epicentre of the riots and bused out to go to school. Ashley is nothing like them. Her parents worked damn hard to make sure she isn't like them. She laughs at her friends jokes and joins in with a rumour that could destroy the life of the school's star athlete. She knows who she is.

But there is something in the back of her mind telling her that she is more like the Black kids at school than the white kids she hangs out with. Ashley's sister has been saying this for years. She's been at the riots every day handing out supplies to the protesters. The more Ashley gets confronted with the reality of the riots, and the more her family get swept up by them, Ashley must decide which side of the picket line she stands on.

Christina Hammonds Reed is a powerhouse. Her writing has so much weight behind it, her sentences have so much impact and her characters feel so real that I was incredibly shocked to find that this is her debut book. I utterly devoured it and her words are echoing in my head as type.

The book feels, despite its setting, to be so current. Ashley could be any girl in the West today, faced with the current racial equality protests that are taking place across the world. For me, this book put the current protests into context. It rooted them and made them feel part of something. And whilst I am sad that less than 20 years after the Rodney King beating we are still having the same conversations, I urge you to read this book. Preorder it. Tell your friends. Stories are power and in the hands of Christina Hammonds Reed, I promise this will change you.

A groundbreaking debut by the crucial new YA voice Christina Hammonds Reed.

Searingly raw and profoundly moving, The Black Kids is an unflinching exploration of race, class, and identity that is as shockingly timely as it is powerfully timeless. I encourage you all to read it.

really enjoyed this one! and i know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but this is one of the best ones i've seen!

set in 1992 this takes place during the rodney king riots following the failure to convict the police officers involved in beating rodney king. the main character is ashley, a black teenager who goes to a predominately white school and is surrounded by white friends, never really interacting much with 'the black kids' of the school. over the years she's picked up things from her friends that make her uncomfortable, their use of the n word, the way they speak about events in the news, but she's mostly shrugged it off.

until the riots and the way l.a changes as it burns

these events lead ashley to make friends with people she never expected, to think about the way she's processed things in the past, the way her actions have consequences, and to generally grow as a person.

i really enjoyed ashley's voice. i loved the casual way she spoke about her friends, her family, the self-awareness within her community, her relationship with her parents and her sister, who has unexpectedly got married and got involved in the riots.

i feel like i'm not explaining anything properly which i always see as a sign of a great book but i really liked this one, i learned a lot, i always love books set in the 90s, and i really liked the ending. would recommend!

"You can't disenfranchise a huge portion of the population and not expect shit to go down. I mean, what they did to him is awful, but really, Rodney's just the tip of the whole goddamn iceberg."

While this book is set in the 90s and follows the story of Rodney King, it feels very timely and it could easily have been written about George Floyd today. This shows that nothing has really changed in all this time.

This a great book with complex characters that covers important matters surrounding race. This is a must-read and should be on the curriculum in schools.

This book is just spectacular!

Set in 1992 Los Angeles with a backdrop of the riots surrounding the acquittal of Rodney King’s murderers, The Black Kids tells the story of Ashley, a black girl at a predominantly white high school and her rich white friends.

The historical elements add an important backdrop to the feelings Ashley is having regarding her own identity, dealing with the microaggressions (and straight up aggressions) she has to deal with from her white classmates.

It’s tender, beautiful and depressingly relevant.

(Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)

I really enjoyed this book, I definitely agree with the comparison to Angie Thomas however The Black Kids is different enough to not be a mirrored copy.

There is so much talk of injustice in this book which I feel is very important, especially for the current time. I really felt for Ashleigh, she goes through so much at such a young age. Growing up, early on in life is imperative and it is so sad to see individuals miss out on their childhood. So many thought provoking topics were discussed within this book and I am still thinking about them long after finishing.

I really liked the writing style in this book it had me engaged from start to finish and once I began I struggled to stop. I more or less finished this book in one sitting and it got me out of a huge reading slump that I had been suffering with.

I cannot recommend this book enough I will be telling as many people about this book as in can. It is one to look out for and one which I think everyone should read.

Ashley is brought up and goes to school with white kids. She even refers to the black kids as “them”. But things change when police officers are found not guilty in their trial of brutality on Rodney King. Set in Los Angeles at the time of the riots Ashley and her sister get caught up in it all.
An illuminating read - I felt at times I’d got into Ashley’s head

I kept forgetting this was set in the 90s. With its themes and everything it felt so current and I'm glad in that regard and now is one of the more fundamental times to read it. We are living it now. We've lived it all our lives, but now may be the chance to change it all around.

This story resonated with me so hard. Somewhat similar to Ashley, I guess I would be considered a "lucky black girl" as I had been, not necessarily sheltered to this extreme, but not exposed to so much rascim in my time, despite living in a predominately white area. Not to say that that would be expected, I'm just mapping out similarities and differences and an overall connection I felt with our protagonist. So that being said, I understood when she said she was used to the casual, subtle rascim, or felt detached from horrible brutality, because it was never right in my face.

Her friends, especially Kimberly, are crap. Heather I like the most, Courtney is a user and Kimberly is just mean. It was interesting to see how friendships evolved and who, if any, would stay strong.
LaShawn was such a lovely character. I wish we had more of him but as the rising of chaos surrounded him that impacted Ashley, I felt like he was only on the edge of her life and was a little untouchable. Especially as Ashley was so accustomed to fitting in with the white kids of the school.
Yet, in saying that, the development grew strong and I was happy with the route that it took.

I love bits of lyrics floating in this. It just gave it that summer vibe, but also resonated profoundly in terms of context.

I did find sometimes Ashley came across a little young but I think it's just spoiled immaturity. It actually adds to her flawed, yet relatable, character.

As I crept ever closer to the end, I was looking forward to seeing how the story ended, but also don't wanna leave these pages. I really wasn't expecting it to just end!

This was a fantastic, coming of age story, how police brutality affects the community, and how a rich, black girl learns to care and see her blackness, learn her worth and more. It wasn't a happily ever after. It was realistic, but very relatable and enjoyable. I loved every minute reading this book!

The Black Kids is a coming of age story set in LA in the late 1900s following Ashley, a wealthy black teen who for most of her life has been sheltered from the world surrounding her.

Ashley's parents have done everything they can to protect their daughters from knowing the truth of what their family and community had to face in the past and present, not realising the consequences that their actions would take in years to come. Although they were trying to protect them, it's evident that the lack of communication has made it harder for Ashley to understand why her family isn't as close any more and how she should react to it all.

Now there are riots and protestors roaming the streets and cops ready to stop anyone who seems suspicious. Ashley feels like an outsider for most of it even when people around her who really care are talking about it, and it's not until incidents occur that make her break away from the people she once called her friends that she can finally stand up and do what she thinks is right for herself.

Throughout this book, Ashley continues to follow and hang out with her white friends who continued to intact acts of microaggression and racism, deeming it okay with Ashley being one of their friends.

This book was compelling and engaging, and I was intrigued to read it through Ashley's perspective and witness how her thoughts and decisions changed as the book went on. Ashley is a character that is flawed but these are what make her feel more real within the book. She makes mistakes and through these mistakes learns and apologises to those that they affect.

Reading about her white friends, who she has been hanging out with since they were young, and how they think that they can make racist comments just because Ashley is their friend made me feel very uneasy knowing that in this age it's seen to still happen and it needs to stop.

Although it is compared to Angie Thomas' The Hate You Give, both books show two completely different views and perspectives to the subjects of racism and discrimination in which they face. Both are brilliantly written and have two unbelievably crafted black female characters.

This book is amazing and I'm so grateful to have been given this opportunity to read it in exchange for my review. Please

If you want to know more about Black Lives Matter, then you should read this book. It will definitely be a book that I will recommend in my secondary school library. Set in 1990s LA., our main character Ashley is trying to find her place in the world. She is on the outside of so many circles, she struggles to define herself in relation to her friends and family. She is a rich POC in a predominately white high school; to fit in with her high school friends she ignores their inherent and ‘casual’ racism; she can’t identify with “the black kids” at her school as they are there on scholarships; and her family have raised her in ignorance of her own black history to try and protect her from the devastating losses they experienced.

This was such a powerful and emotional read for me. The book begins with the police brutality of Rodney King which has far too many parallels with the tragic death of George Floyd today. The author weaves the past and present together so cleverly from Ashley’s great-grandma to the LA riots in the 1990s. But this story could easily have been set in 2020. It has made me pause and reflect on my own knowledge of Black History and white supremacy.

The central character holding all of this together is Ashley and you can feel the weight of the plot (and the future) resting on her shoulders. Ashley is ignorant of her own history and we learn alongside her and watch her become more aware of the world around her. She is a flawed character but likeable as she discovers who she is amidst so many emotional upheavals. She learns she has to make her own way in the world. “If all the heroes in our stories are white, what does that make us?” It’s time for a change.

4.5 stars.

This book feels so relevant given what's happened recently and it's such an important read to show that, sadly, things haven't changed as much as people hoped it would.

The characters were incredible and so realistic. This was so powerful and beautifully written, and these stories are so important to tell.

The only reason this wasn't a 5 star for me was purely that the story occasionally felt disjointed and hard to grasp exactly what just happened in places. However, that's purely a personal preference on the writing. Everything else was so cleverly done and I really enjoyed this book.

I received a free ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Oh. My. God.

I found myself avoiding this book after starting it - because I didn't want it to end.

Ashley Bennett is an upper middle-class girl living an upper middle-class life in an upper middle-class school with her upper middle-class friends.

Ashley Bennett is the only black girl in her friend group, one of few black people in her school and in her neighbourhood, and it's L.A. in the spring of 1992, right as the Rodney King riots begin.

This book is written so beautifully. Christina Reed seamlessly joins together past and future so that the reader is given a full view of Ashley's life - from her relationships with her family and friends to the racial micro- and macro-aggressions she experiences throughout her life.

Ashley is a great character - despite her constant misgivings about being a selfish person, she's a good kid who feels a bit lost. And Jesus, wouldn't you be?

An engaging and impactful coming of age story, following Ashley, a Black teen living in a primarily white and privileged area, who has lived a sheltered life in comparison to many of her Black peers. We read as Ashley becomes more socially and politically awakened, and truly comes to terms with her friends ignorance, micro aggressions and comes to understand and support her sisters passion and activism, which she previously dismissed. With plenty of social commentary and exploration of the LA riots following the assault of Rodney King at the hands of Police and how this event, sets off major repercussions for the city and in Ashley's own life. Although the novel is set in 1992, it has some extremely relevant moments and messages that can be applied to current events, reflecting that as far as people think we may have come, there is SO much work yet to do to dismantle a system which not only perpetuates racism but has been inherently flawed and unjust, and structured against BIPOC from it's very inception.

Full review to come closer to release date!

This book is set in 1992, following the horrific incident of police brutality against Rodney King in LA and the riots that ensued. It's incredibly terrifying, frustrating, and heartbreaking that this book could be set in 2020 and would require very little changes, showing just how little progress has been made in the area of civil rights and the reform of the police in over two decades. Hammonds Reed did a very good job of illustrating what it is like to be a young Black person growing up in the US, particularly in a time of increased tensions. I particularly liked how this book showed different perspectives of people's lives and how they experience racism—for example, Uncle Ronnie and his family live in a poorer neighbourhood and their home and business are directly impacted by the riots, whereas Ashley's family live in a rich, white neighbourhood and her parents try to shelter their kids from the racism they themselves faced (which, of course, is impossible to do as POC—especially Black people—will unfortunately always face racism, despite their wealth and social status, as various incidents throughout this book highlight). We also see how Jo and Ashley struggle with understanding their identity and feeling like they are making a difference but in very different ways.

There were some issues I had with this book, which is why I only ended up rating it 3 stars, but I won't go into them here as I don't want to put anyone off reading it. I really do recommend people read this as it covers such an important and relevant topic, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for some time. I'm also aware that this is Hammonds Reed's debut novel and I am genuinely very interested to see what they write next and see how they evolve as an author.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I started reading this book the George Floyd protests had been going on for a while - not just in America, but UK and Australia and other countries too. The book is set at the time of the Rodney King murder and there is a paragraph about choke holds from 10 years previous to that, and there were protests before then, again and again . It's all been going on for so long - for far too long.

This is an amazing book, I learnt a lot from it. If you want to know a little more about why black lives matter then read this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I read an advance review copy of the book. This review is voluntary, honest and my own opinions.

This book confused me a lot. There are lot of back and forth between past and present and sometimes I just didn't know what I was reading. But I really the main character and how the conflit was developped. There was a lot of thing happening in this story but I mostly enjoyed. I thought the author really portrayed teenage years.

The Black Kids is emotive, educational and groundbreaking, Christina Hammonds Reed uses her voice to encourage readers to leave the comfort of their privilege and speak out. Perfect for fans of The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, Reed weaves the past and present in this coming of age drama, about a war between the world and racism. This might be one of the most important books of the year. 

This book is a historical fiction, centering around the LA Protests in 1992, a true historic event I'm ashamed to say I knew little about. A state of emergency was declared in April 1992 as LA erupted into riots after four white officers beat a Black motorist. These events, despite taking place more than thirty years ago, are strikingly similar to the news of today, echoing the importance of supporting Black Lives Matter movements, and Black authors.

"It's not just about the cops, right? It's all of it. Yes, the LAPD is racist as hell, and black and brown communities get policed differently than white ones. That's a fact. But also, the school suck. There's no jobs. You don't give people any opportunities to make something of themselves."

We follow protagonist Ashley, who lives in a wealthy neighborhood with her family, and attends a prestigious school. Her parents have done their best to shelter her from the violence of racism, and the heritage of her family, ensuring she is financially funded and has a secure life. But Ashley can't stay young forever. All the Black Kids have to grow up faster than the rest, with injustice meaning they have to learn how to act around police, and what they can't do even when their white friends do it anyway. Life isn't easy for her, and it's only going to get harder. Ashley is such a compelling narrator, and her voice feels so real. She acknowledges her fear about speaking out, her reluctance to make new friends and the struggles she faces navigating her last few weeks at high school. We see her inner battle as she endures racism from her childhood friends, who see it merely as a joke. Her narrative is thought provoking.

"I'm always saying things are cool when maybe they aren't. Sometimes I have so much to say that I can't say anything at all."

I want to take a moment to discuss her friends. Courtney, Kimberly, Michael, and the rest of her friends all felt uncomfortably realistic. I'm sure we have all met someone like these characters, and allowed them push others around in their self centered bubbles. They joke that sneaking around would be easier without Ashley because she is black. Even when it came to the protests, kids were only taking part because everyone else was and they wanted to look cool, or simply have a day off school. The mailman in one of the very first scenes does a double take when Ashley's Black parents answer the door. All of this is not right. Reed places them in the story to remind us to have uncomfortable conversations with our family, to challenge our friends, and stand up for people like Ashley.

"If all the heroes in our stories are white, what does that make us?"

The Black kids is unflinching when it comes to mental health representation. We see Jo, Ashley's sister and Michael's mother struggle through depression. We also have the portrayal of domestic violence, and the young kids who have to endure it because they don't have anywhere else to go. I wish I could thank Reed for her honest portrayal of these issues.

The tone shifts throughout the novel. In the beginning, Ashley is with her friends, its bright and full of imagery. However, as we progress, the tone gradually becomes mellow and blue as though we feel the sadness of LA weighing upon the narrative. We begin to shift back and forth in time, learning the history of Ashley's family, what she endured in childhood and school. One moment that stuck out to me was the list Ashley compiled of each age she had endured a racial slur. It was harrowing, a reminder of the harsh reality Black people face, no matter how financially privileged they are.

Overall, I can't recommend this enough. As a YA contemporary and historical fiction, it is one of the most impactful books I have read this year. I encourage everyone to read it.

"It's about all of us. About all our black and brown brothers and sisters struggling to make ends meet in a system set up for them to fail. We have to change the system."