Thomas's Reviews > Pineapple Street

Three stars feels a bit generous but, anyway, I thought this book was just okay. It follows the wealthy white Stockton family and three specific women within this family: Darly, the oldest daughter who was born with money but gave it up when she married her wealthy but not as wealthy husband, Sasha, who grew up middle class and married into the Stockton family, and Georgiana, the youngest daughter who works at a nonprofit and may develop a conscience about whether she should keep her trust fund or not. The three navigate romantic, financial, and familial conflicts throughout the book.

To start with the positive, I thought this book was mildly entertaining. I wouldn’t say the writing was of super high quality or the plot was one of the most immersive I’ve read this year, but I wasn’t bored reading it, could tell our three main protagonists apart from one another, and discerned that each of the three did have recognizable growth arcs by the end of the book. The cover and popularity of the book motivated me to read it and I didn’t hate the book.

Still, I found the book on a whole rather average. As stated earlier the writing wasn’t remarkable even though it wasn’t awful either. The characters all grew, but not in particularly groundbreaking ways. The book on a whole was predictable, though perhaps that’s the intended vibe. The one major thing I had issue with, which is why three stars feels generous, is that one of the characters decides to become a philanthropist by the end of the novel and the author doesn’t really acknowledge the problematic elements of rich white people engaging in philanthropy. The author seems to frame this character’s philanthropy as unilaterally positive, which ignores the white savior elements of a white woman still having the power to dictate what money goes to where and more, instead of thinking more critically about mutual aid, redistribution of wealth on a broader scale, etc.
It was alright! I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily but if you want a very casual book to pass the time, Pineapple Street may work.