Nicola Yoon is a legend. Which is why it was quite shocking to find out that in the years she's been in the business, there is actually something she hasn't done yet. But now she's changing things up with her first adult novel and she's not holding back. Of course, Nicola never really was in the first place. But there's something about her writing for a new kind of audience that not only raises the stakes, but also is exciting as a reader getting to check out her work in a new light.

Cosmopolitan has an excerpt of Nicola's newest novel, One of Our Kind, that's all about a all-Black gated community and how far people are willing to go to try to forget the darkest moments that are truly affecting their lives. It's unlike any other book you've read and really digs deep on racial trauma and how the idea of utopia and perfection can also include a sinister side. Here's some more info from our friends at Knopf:

For fans of The Sellout and The Other Black Girl, a propulsive, daring satire of race and privilege set in an all-Black gated community from #1 New York Times best-selling author Nicola Yoon • “Brilliant, provocative, seminal….Your book club will be discussing this one for DAYS.”—Jodi Picoult

Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.

Jasmyn’s only friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by most residents’ outlook. Then Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders. Frustration turns to dread as their loved ones start embracing the Liberty way of life.

Will the truth destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined?

A gripping thriller with wry, razor-sharp social commentary, One of Our Kind explores the ways in which freedom is complicated by the presumptions we make about ourselves and each other.

Ready to read more and find out the truth about Liberty? Check out an exclusive excerpt below, but make sure to pick up your copy of One of Our Kind and check out Nicola's other titles as well.

An Excerpt From One of Our Kind
By Nicola Yoon

4

"Where should we eat?” Jasmyn asks King as they’re driving through downtown Liberty on their way to brunch. Instead of sitting up front next to him, she’s in the back with Kamau. Earlier he’d complained of being lonely. She’d patted her stomach and reminded him he’d have a brother in a few months.

“But that’s too long,” he’d said.

They drive by the Jamaican food place where they’d had lunch on their first visit to Liberty. The food was excellent, with authentically spicy jerk pork. On that visit, she and King laughed about the “Caribbean” place they’d gone to in Santa Monica years before. Not a Black person in sight, not at the tables and not in the kitchen. The jerk sampler they’d gotten didn’t have salt, let alone any other kind of spice.

They pass by two barbershops and two hair salons and two nail spas, a place devoted to eyebrow waxing, another dedicated to body sculpting, all of them impeccably upscale. She compares the street to the ones where she grew up. Missing are the wig shops, check cashing places, corner stores that sell everything from loosies to tampons, Chinese restaurants with bulletproof glass. Mercifully, there’s no expectation of danger built into the DNA of the design here.

Again, Jasmyn remembers the first time they toured potential homes. The real estate agent had been a woman with pale brown skin and short wavy hair. She spoke in the bright, peppy way of someone trying to sell you something. She’d driven them around Liberty and explained the town’s two distinct residential areas. The first was in the Flats, closest to the downtown area. By Liberty standards the houses there were modest, priced in the high six figures. The other residential area extended up from the Flats to the gated community at the top of the hill, close to where the Wellness Center dominated the skyline. The agent took them on tours a quarter of the way up the hill where the homes started in the low seven-figure range.

The house they eventually chose was the third one they saw.

“It’s practically new,” the agent said. “You’ll be happy to know—should you select this wonderful property—you’d be only the second family to call it home.”

Jasmyn had been surprised they wouldn’t be the first. The house certainly seemed like it was brand-new. “When was this built?” she asked.

They were all standing in the bright white kitchen. King turned the faucet on and off to check the water pressure. He opened and closed the cabinets. Jasmyn had never even seen a kitchen so large and beautiful. Could it really come to be theirs?

The woman consulted her clipboard. “Construction was completed in January of last year.”

“So the other family lived here for less than a year?” Jasmyn asked. That was surprising. “What happened? They die or something? Don’t be letting us move into no haunted house now,” she joked.

Both King and the agent laughed at that.

But Jasmyn wanted an answer. “Seriously, though, do you know why the other family moved away so quick?”

The agent looked down at her clipboard as if the answer were on there. “I’m not sure,” she said.

Jasmyn didn’t miss the evasiveness in the woman’s voice. Maybe she was just being a good agent and protecting the privacy of her clients. Jasmyn let it go.

Later, King said he’d noticed her nervousness, too. “Probably didn’t want to scare us and lose out on the commission,” he said.

The next morning they’d made the offer on the house. By the evening, they were proud owners of a six-thousand-square-foot, multistory house with six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a gourmet chef’s kitchen, and a generous backyard with mature fruit trees and an Olympic-sized pool and Jacuzzi. And, of course, three living rooms.

≈

Now as they pull into the traffic circle that borders the huge and immaculate central park, Kamau points outside the car window. “What are those people doing?” he asks.

Jasmyn looks. A group of ten or fifteen people are doing some sort of exercise in a small clearing between the trees. They’re wearing gray sweatshirts with Liberty Wellness Center stenciled across the back and matching spandex pants.

“It’s called yoga,” she says to Kamau, even though it doesn’t look like any kind of yoga she’s ever seen.

She recognizes the couple leading the group. “Don’t they live a few houses up from us?” she asks King.

He nods. “Angela and Benjamin Sayles,” he says. “Nice people. Both of them are plastic surgeons. She specializes in burn victims and he does some sort of reconstructive surgery. They’re part of the group that helped found Liberty in the first place.”

Jasmyn watches them shift positions, pointing their legs toward the sky. How is it that she and King now live next to people—Black people—with enough money and pedigree to found entire neighborhoods?

When she and King first met, he was a history teacher at Martin Luther King High School in Compton. In those days, they couldn’t even dream of living in a neighborhood like this. Not on her public defender’s salary and his teacher’s one.

But one day he’d taken an online class so he could understand how their retirement money was being invested. One of his teachers, a Blackman named Carlton Way, took King under his wing. He said King had a brilliant analytical mind. He’d made sure King applied for, and got, a full scholarship to do an online MBA. As soon as he graduated, King gave up teaching and went to work for Argent Financial, Carlton’s company. In three years, he worked his way up to junior partner at one of the biggest venture capital firms in Los Angeles. It was Carlton Way who told King about Liberty in the first place. It turned out that creating Liberty had been Carlton’s idea. He’d recruited a few of his wealthy friends as founders and together they’d made Liberty into a reality.

Jasmyn had met Carlton only once, soon after he’d taken an interest in King. He’d taken her and King to dinner at the most expensive restaurant she’d ever been to. Aside from the decor and atmosphere, she knew it was expensive because the menu had no prices listed. Also, the three of them were the only Black people there, including the waitstaff.

The main thing Jasmyn remembers about Carlton is how comfortable he seemed in his own skin. She’d never seen anything like it, certainly not in someone Black. He had the sturdy and effortless confidence of a wealthy, white politician. Was it his extravagant wealth that gave it to him? There was something gilded, something robber-baron-esque about him. Jasmyn couldn’t decide if she admired it or was repulsed by it. Still, the thing she remembers most about that evening was how badly she’d wanted to make a good impression on Carlton for King’s sake.

King pulls into a parking spot right in front of the French bistro he’s been wanting to try. For the rest of the morning, Jasmyn can’t help but compare her experiences here in Liberty with the world she knew before. The restaurant is bustling, but not packed. The hostess greets them with just the right amount of friendly professionalism and seats them quickly. Their waiter is prompt and attentive. She and King don’t have to stew at being ignored in favor of a white couple, as has happened to them at restaurants so many times before.

The food is delicious. Even Kamau, who’s normally picky, likes his meal. They have a wonderful time. On the drive home, Jasmyn sits upfront and holds King’s hand.

They pass by the park again. The yoga people are no longer doing their poses. Instead, they’re sitting on their knees in neat rows on the grass. From where they are in the traffic circle, Jasmyn can only see their backs. The man she’d noticed before—Benjamin Sayles—is standing at the head of the group sweeping his arms in, up, and out, like he’s conducting an orchestra.

Jasmyn looks on, bemused. “Are they singing?” She doesn’t take her eyes off them as King steers the car around the circle. Finally, their faces come into view.

They aren’t singing. They’re laughing. Their heads are tilted back, and their eyes are half closed, and their mouths are wide, and their teeth are bared.

Jasmyn slaps King’s shoulder harder than she means to. “King, look,”she says, pointing out at them.

“Jesus,” King says, rubbing at his shoulder. He looks to where Jasmyn pointed. “What on earth is going on there?”

Jasmyn opens her window. At first, she hears nothing beyond the usual street noises. But then the sound reaches her: laughter so loud and brash and raucous, it’s almost vulgar.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She stabs at the button to close her window. “The hell was that?”

King shakes his head. “No idea.” Then he chuckles. “Some type of meditation? People will try anything.”

“You see they’re wearing Wellness Center clothes?” She looks over atKing. “That the kind of craziness they get up to up there?”

“Wouldn’t catch me doing any of that ridiculous nonsense,” King says, laughing.

Jasmyn laughs now, too. They really do look ridiculous.

“Can we go get some ice cream?” Kamau asks.

“We have ice cream at home, buddy,” King says as he turns them onto their street.

Jasmyn looks back, trying to catch a final glimpse of the laughing people. Just as she does, they slump to the ground in unison, like marionettes whose strings had abruptly been cut.

BLACK BUSINESS INSIDER:
“PROFILES IN BRIEF: CARLTON WAY”

Who is Carlton Way?

Born in the Bronx, New York, Mr. Way, 56, put himself through MIT, graduating magna cum laude in chemical engineering. He subsequently earned an MBA from Stanford, becoming the youngest African American ever to graduate from their storied program. Following stints at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Mr. Way founded his own firm, Argent Financial, specializing in investments in lifestyle products. He is also a co-founder of Liberty, a thriving, entirely Black Los Angeles suburb founded on the principles of Black excellence.

Net Worth

Per Forbes, Mr. Way is worth an estimated $3 billion.

Personal Life

Born to public school teachers, Mr. Way had an early life marked by the tragic loss of his father to a police-involved shooting. He is unmarried and has no children.

Notable Philanthropy

Since 2017, Mr. Way has paid the loans for the entire graduating class ofHoward University, an HBCU (Historically Black College or University) in the United States. In an interview, Mr. Way said he wanted the graduates to be “unshackled from the chains of financial slavery.”