I love the new apparent trend of books talking about how very hard it is to be a woman in your twenties. While it hits a bit close to home for me (as I am 27 and also feel I am flailing sometimes, ha), it is very relatable and moving.

I usually enjoy books about family life, but this book failed to hold my interest. The characters were not very likable. Thanks to author Jessica George, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley. I received a complimentary copy of this ebook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

4.5 stars.

Synopsis: 25 year old Maddie's life is far from ideal. She is the primary caretaker to her father who has Parkinson's, while her overbearing mother spends most of her time in Ghana. Needless to say, Maddie has not had much opportunity to really *live* her life. When her mother returns to London from her latest trip, Maddie decides to move out and begins making decisions for herself. Soon, she is going on dates, meeting coworkers for after work drinks, and advocating for more recognition at work. When tragedy strikes, Maddie is forced to confront her family dynamics and navigate grief, while also welcoming opportunities to build the life she desires and deserves.

Thoughts: This was a beautiful and raw coming of age story. It also tackles familial responsibility, racism, female pleasure, the magic of friendship, and the woes of dating. Maddie is a protagonist you cannot help root for, and you want to give her a hug as as grief takes its toll on her mental health. There are so many relatable elements to her story that I am confident every person will find something that will resonate with them.

While I enjoyed the glimpse into Ghanaian culture in this book, one that was very unfamiliar to me, I found Maddie unlikeable. Her life was a hard one. She was taken disadvantage off by her family so badly that I should have been full of sympathy for her. Unfortunately, she made so many poor decisions and acted so cringe-ily that parts of the book were difficult to read. Otherwise, I found the book well written, especially for a debut novel. I know many people like books with unlikeable characters, and I would recommend this book to them!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Oh my goodness could this book of gotten any better? Honestly, probably not, it was pretty damn great.

Maame is such a beautiful story. We follow Maddie, our late bloomer, always dependable main character. When the story starts Maddie is quiet and hasn't really lived yet. By the time we say goodbye she has grown into a strong confident woman and her journey isn't one you'll want to miss.

The writing was beautiful. The story was wonderfully told. There were moments of laughter, moments of sadness and moments of total shock. Maame is one I highly recommend adding to your TBR if you haven't already.

Great book! Very character driven without losing the reader. I’m so glad I read it and can’t wait to recommend it!

Wow! This book touched my heart in a way that books rarely do. Narrated in first person, Maddie is a young woman from Ghana, who struggles with selflessly giving herself in behalf of her family. As the responsible one, she cares for her sick father since her other family members have effectively abandoned their roles - her mother has spent every other year in Ghana since Maddie was a young girl, leaving Maddie in charge. Her older brother, James, moved out during adolescence to live with friends and makes himself unavailable for any type of family support.

Maddie struggles with her role in the family, her career and her social relationships. The story really takes off about halfway through making it difficult to put down.

The writing is magical and heartwarming.
The conversations Maddie has with others and in her head are funny, sarcastic, kind, loving, and at times heart shattering, but always honest. Character development at its best!

First, I’d like to thank NetGalley and St Martins Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I absolutely ADORED this book! This is a debut and it was so beautifully written and was such a wonderful coming of age novel! I just wanted to give Maddie a big hug for most of this book. What I really loved was how Maddie came into herself and found her voice and her strength. The friendships portrayed were also so special. While this was in most ways very serious, there were so many times I laughed out loud, particularly when Maddie would Google. Also, loved the look into the Ghanaian culture as well. This book is being released in January and it should definitely be a Book of the Month selection! I’m excited to see what Jessica George has for us in the future.

Maame is a beautiful coming of age story. But think of it as more of a late coming of age story as Maddie is in her mid 20s. It is her special circumstances that prevented her from being a careless young person.

Maddie comes from a Ghanaian family. Her mom starts spending every other year In Ghana, running her father's hotel leaving teenage Maddie and her brother with their distant father. And her mom reminds her that their family's business should stay private so at an early age Maddie starts keeping everything to herself. She doesn't open up to her friends. She doesn't have many anyway. Then when she was still very young her father gets diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Maddie finds herself as the primary care giver. Maddie is clearly lonely and depressed. Then her mom comes back to care for Maddie's father and Maddie finally moves out of the house, gets herself flatmates and starts living like a 20something, Her work life is complicated. She feels like her idea's are being used without any credit. Then there is her love life. She mets someone and this relationship goes places Maddie is not yet ready for. Then the worst happens and her dad dies. Maddie starts to wallow in guilt, self pity and depression.

Maddie's story reminded me of Yinka's in Yinka, Where is Your Husband. Maame is less humorous than that other book. While there are similarities in deeply religious mother's pressuring daughters to meet someone and get married and struggling with both Ghanaian and British identities, Maame leans heavily into, caregiver burnout, loss and grief. Maddie acts very young and clueless sometimes and makes mistakes. That is expected of any coming of age story. What set this apart from the others for me is how well the therapy sections were written. Maddie and her therapist Angelina's conversation were really special and eye opening. Not related to the book but I pictured Angelina as the Doc in Ted Lasso:)

Maddie's family, especially her mother and brother behave terribly towards Maddie for most of the book but there is some sort of growth and redemption for them at the end. The way Maddie's romantic relationships written left much to be desired, It made me feel very sad for Maddie but I was glad she found a better match for herself at the end.

My favorite part about this book was Maddie' and the therapist's discussion on the importance of names in their culture. On how this nickname Maame shaped Maddie's personaity. On how much pressure it put on her. "In many ways, they're given to us in an attempt to speak for our future. It seems there is a link between our names and our supposed destinyWe could apply that thinking to the name Maame: the responsible one. The woman. The mother. Often before her time" and how after doing the work in therapy and starting to heal slightly Maddie recognizes she doesn't actually hates the nickname that it was supposed to be a term of endearment but it was her family that turned it into an excuse. She admits the name made her someone she needed to be so she could find out who she wants to be.

I also liked the random Google searches peppered throughout the book. As I said before Maddie is a young 25yo. She doesn't have a lot of friends so when she has a question, she simply googles. These searches helped to keep the tone of the book lighter.

All in all, I think this was a very good debut.

What a strong and captivating debut novel from Jessica George!

From the first few pages, I was immersed into the life of the main character, Maddie. Her plate is completely full from working full time, taking care of her father who has Parkinson’s while her mother has been in Ghana the past year. From here, things quickly change in Maddie’s life: her mother is coming back among other things I do not want to spoil. While she has been busy being a responsible adult, there are so many things she has not experienced at her age of 25. Her mother coming back home from Ghana allows her to move out on her own and experience these firsts, which of course comes along with their own sets of problems.

Maddie is a really likable character, and I was sucked into experiencing her highs and lows. The author’s writing allowed me to feel the grief and happiness Maddie goes through. I read this book in two days since I wanted to see what would happen. Overall, people and life try to hold Maddie back while she faces various obstacles. Maddie tries her best and sometimes things do not work out for her, just like in life. There felt a uniqueness in this novel and plot. For example, I loved that Maddie would Google things since this is something I do too and could relate, especially since some of the searches were funny. I was kept interested and there were plenty of surprises to keep the plot fresh.

I really hope Jessica George publishes more in the future, since I would definitely read her next book.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Rachel Hawkins, and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advanced reader’s copy.

Wow - what a powerful book. This was so well written, I felt like I was feeling all of Maddie's feelings with her. Navigating your 20's is hard, dealing with grief is hard, standing up for yourself is. hard. The way that Maddie handled all of these situations was so authentic - talk about character development.

Maddie grew into such a different person by the end of this book. She started as a timid, naive, people pleaser and slowly grew into a much more confident, authentic version of herself. All of the curveballs that life threw her way made her a stronger version of herself.

This book provided such a good look at life through Maddie's eyes that I was able to learn from this book and become more aware of others' challenges. I genuinely think that this is a book I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review this title prior to publication. I was really excited about this book, as it explores themes of grief, race, family obligation, and self-discovery. I started reading and could not put it down for about the first half of the book. Maddie is engaging and thoughtful as she attempts to write a new life for herself. However, around the midpoint I grew frustrated with passages that read more like "explaining" or "telling" than showing - about sex, work politics, stages of grief, and mental health. It slowed the story down for me and left me feeling meh at the end. I did like the resolution of the story, but the writing did not work for me.

This book was such a welcome and pleasant surprise. I don’t use the word “love” loosely with books much anymore, just because I read so many, but I loved this one. If you enjoyed QUEENIE or GHOSTS I think this one would be up your alley. I really saw a lot of myself in Maddie which I think contributed to my connection with this book, which is largely character driven. I understood her inner thoughts and the difficult positions she was in. Her lack of self-worth and parental guilt is something that we can all understand. Her character arc was redemptive and I felt proud of her by the end. Highly recommend if you’re looking for an emotional, character driven, novel with a variety of very real themes.

Maame, at its core, is a coming of age story about 25-year-old Maddie Wright. At the start of the book, her life in London is far from ideal. She lives at home, is her father’s primary caregiver, and has tension with her mother. When she finally gets the opportunity to to move out, Maddie takes the chance and with that, has to learn how to navigate the “real world” on her own. What follows is a journey about self-discovery as Maddie explores dating, a new job and life living with friends while also being faced with the unexpected.

This novel deals with very important topics like mental health, racism, identity and family relationships. Maddie was a character I instantly liked and while her journey is different from my own experiences, there are pieces of her the are so relatable. I listened to the audiobook and thought the narration was extremely well done and engaging.

Thank you MacMillan Audio for the ALC! Pub 1/31

A lovely, unique coming of age tale. I quite liked Maddie as the protagonist of this story and found a lot of her behavior to be relatable given these circumstances; I especially understood the constant desire to Google answers to burning questions as they present themselves. The story allows for Maddie to see not only herself in a new way through her journey, but also life as well as her friends and family to ultimately figure out who exactly she wants to be as an independent woman. I appreciated the inclusion of Ghanian culture and customs into Maddie's perspective.

What I liked about this book was how much I loved the main character Maddie. Her internal dialogue shows a mature young woman who is wise beyond her years in so many ways and immature for her age in so many others. She is also unabashedly human and oh-so-funny. She has two good friends who have her back and are wonderful side characters. I loved how fierce they were and how they helped and stood up for Maddie.

This is impeccable storytelling, in every sense of the word, with themes of family dynamics, sexuality, race, feminism, and growing as a person as well as up. I hated Maddie's mom, and on a smaller scale her brother, with a passion. Her mother was absent, condescending, and just plain rude. Although she has her reasons, to me they just weren't good enough and came across as excuses.

I enjoyed so much about this wonderfully written, heartfelt, and captivating story. I really loved being on Maddie's journey. What a wonderful debut. I can't wait to see what Ms. George comes up with next!

You will NOT want to miss out on this book. If I had a crystal ball, I would see Maame as a number 1 choice in books to read in 2023. This book is about Maddie, a 25 year old Londoner whose parents are from Ghana. Even though she had a mother and father, and an older brother, she was the responsible one. At a young age, she was responsible for taking care of bills, her sick father and the household while her mother spent time in Ghana. She was also told that family does not tell outsiders about private family matters. Quite the weight to bear for someone still in middle school. When her mother finally comes home to take care of her husband, Maddie is told that it is her turn to live her life, get married and have children. What follows is a year in Maddie's life as she works as a PA and assistant editorial staff. She meets men, makes friends but never really feels happy with herself. Her dad dies, she gives up her virginity and tries to come to terms with her grief. This is not a sad book, but rather the book of a fighter who doesn't give up. She also realizes that she is MORE than she thought she was, which makes this novel rather inspiring. The bits about Ghana culture were very interesting to read. Just a really fantastic book that I couldn't put down once I began reading. This book will undoubtably be put in the category of "coming of age" but don't let that deter you from reading it. I shy away from "coming of age" novels, but this one is SO MUCH MORE. I was blessed to receive an ARC from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press. This opinion is my own.

Maddie is ready to start her own life…while her mother is off in Ghana, Maddie is left to take care of her ailing father who has become debilitated from Parkinson’s disease. She’s twenty-five years old, never lived on her own, and hasn’t even had sex before. Her wings are itching to spread, so when her mom comes back to help with her dad, she takes the opportunity to move out. She is forced to figure out how she wants her life to look and quickly finds her voice. Not only did I love Maddie’s character development, I especially loved how George weaved in so many instances of the Black experience and how Maddie was expected to weave her UK identity in with her Ghanaian background. This was a strong coming-of-age debut and I’m looking forward to George’s future works! (This one comes out January 31, 2023!)

In this story the main character Maddie struggles with many heavy topics, racism, familial duty, mental health, and sexuality. Though the book dealt with a lot of difficult topics, it always kept a hopeful note. I really appreciated the portrayal of mental health issues, and what it feels like to struggle and have people in your family encourage you to ignore it and deny it instead of seeking help. I think so many struggle silently this way and don’t feel like they can seek help or talk about it, and I love how the author addresses this. Maddie was such a likeable character, that I was rooting for from the beginning. This was a beautiful coming of age story. My first book by this author, but it won’t be my last. I received ab ARC from netgalley, and this is my honest review.

Maame follows the life and blossoming independence of a young woman, who finally has the chance to jump out on her own, get some flat mates, and a new life, when her whole world comes crumbling down. How will she navigate her new world? Will dating finally begin to make sense? Can she finally stand up to those around her?

Maame was flawed in the most human way possible. Instead of exuding immediate resilience in the face of adversity, she crumbled before rebuilding a foundation built to hold up those around her. She learned what it truly meant to be loved, and respected by others, even though it took hurt to get to that point.