The premise sounds great, but I don't think the book ever really lived up to it. I just wanted it to be more complex and interesting than it was. In fact, it almost constantly throws up talking points as if the authors were working through a list of topics. We Are Not Like Them will be a fabulous choice for book clubs, which is likely exactly what it was written for. We Are Not Like Them is both a powerful conversation starter and a celebration of the enduring power of friendship.

Covering this career-making story, Riley wrestles with the implications of this tragic incident for her Black community, her ambitions, and her relationship with her lifelong friend. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband’s freedom, and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia.īut the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.

Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten.

Trying to understand one another is how Jenny and Riley eventually move forward.Told from alternating perspectives, this novel follows two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event. As Riley and Jenny struggle to face the tension in their relationship, they are encouraged in different ways to communicate and understand the other’s point of view. Cameron was inexperienced he made the bad call This isn’t about race, Riley. Riley sees the death as personal, a death that could have been her own brother, and reinforces what the Black community already knows: “ will be seen as menacing and scary, as trespassers in places that certain people don’t feel they belong, as people who deserve to be questioned or confronted, or even killed because of the color of their skin” (145). From Jenny’s point of view, “ He shot first, so Kevin had to open fire. While the shooting of Justin Dwyer is a fact, the story differs depending on whose vantage point it is seen from. Although the craft of the novel quite literally switches between points of view, the complicated shooting at hand asks readers to do the same.

Jo piazza we are not like them