This stands atop the literary fiction I've read in 2020 as a refreshingly direct and compelling read with a lot of important themes for the 21st century literary fiction readers' customer base to digest. It feels to me like Kiley Reid wrote the Thanksgiving Dinner sequence as a short story initially - it's the only event in the book that gets multiple chapters devoted to it and the immediate fallout. As a result, there's definitely some racing-to-the-finish writing in the final part of the book, with a climax that feels theatrical at the expense of a really dialogue-rich confrontation. But overall, the writing for the protagonist, Emira, was excellent and the satirical jabs of Alix Chamberlain's privileged social circles was very satisfying.