I feel like her style is a great platform for Readers to have some real self-reflective, as well as shoe-on-the-other-foot, moments. They have high hopes when they are invited to a neighborhood barbecue, but when Selma spots her neighbor, Tom, ripping out her Black Lives Matter banner, tensions between the neighbors quickly escalate. They perch on society’s fault lines, observing how the codes of class and race determine actions, how good intentions can be weakness, how a word or a gesture can lead inexorably to catastrophe. Even though the tensions between the families had definite undertones of racism and class privilege, mostly, the battle was just a lot of pettiness, and the characters’ mix of exhaustion and rage as things kept escalating radiated from the page.

Those People Next Door, by Kia Abdullah | Literary Review | Those People Next Door, by Kia Abdullah | Literary

Battle lines are drawn between the families that will lead to prejudice and anger of such volatility that it has devastating consequences for both families, and each will pay dearly for it. Because they’re new here, she doesn’t want to make a fuss, so she puts the banner in her window and chooses not to say anything to Tom. Imagine her surprise when she wakes the next morning to find someone has painted over her window that displayed the banner blocking it from view. Those People Next Door” was my least favorite book by Kia Abdullah perhaps because it was reminiscent of “Those People” (my least favorite book by Louise Candlish) ?With a couple of stunning twists at the end, this is yet another example of Kia Abdullah’s exceptional talent!

Those People Next Door - Wikiwand

Against this backdrop, we have the friendship between Zain and Jamie, who have teamed up to develop an app for deaf folks. The way she frames her stories, it explores both sides, instead of hammering home with one character's perspective. Whenever I see Kia Abdullah’s name attached to a book, I get very excited, and ‘Those People Next Door’ was a perfect example of why this author elicits such feelings.All six are doing their best to get by in this world, yet because of…well, choices, they can’t quite have the lives they want. Sure, he shouldn’t have said what he did about the smells of Salma’s cooking, but he paid dearly for that remark, and I can’t blame Willa for feeling angry that the video was posted even after Salma promised it wouldn’t be. This makes full use of snobbery, both of the upper classes towards the working folks, and that of the lower class Charles Victor, full of Bolshie contempt for the uppers, and yet always ready to cadge whatever he fancies, from a beer to Warner's reading glasses. there are a LOT of characters in this one and although the ending twist surprised me and was enjoyable, i think the main thing that was missing for me was really loving and emotionally connecting to a character.