There are plenty of gut-wrenching situations in life that test the strength of our mettle. But sometimes, a crisis comes along with no apparent blueprint on how to navigate our way through. That’s the tension at the heart of We Are Not Like Them (HarperCollins), a novel by close friends and co-authors Jo Piazza and Christine Pride, which centres on a richly layered friendship between a white receptionist (Jen) and a Black broadcast journalist (Riley). When Jen’s police officer husband fatally shoots an unarmed Black teenager and Riley is assigned to report on the story, the pair are forced to reckon with race for the first time – and face losing their lifelong bond.
“Written before George Floyd’s murder, We Are Not Like Them is a novel borne from a clear-eyed mission: we need to have more conversations about race,” says Stylist contributor Christobel Hastings. “Piazza and Pride have found a clever way to do it, using their lived experiences to provide a window into their characters’ different perspectives. The authors are both literary veterans, and it shows: the prose is polished, accessible and wholly relatable, sprinkled with familiar lines like, “I’m scared of saying the wrong thing” and “You don’t get points for having one Black friend” – but the first-person narration also reveals many parallel thoughts between the characters. Piazza and Pride were partially motivated by the saddening statistic that 75% of white Americans don’t have a friend of another race, and this novel, while highlighting the great benefit of disrupting our blind spots and beliefs, also showcases the beauty of interracial friendship. They’ve just started working on their second book, and I can’t wait to see where they go next.” £8.99, Bookshop.org