Alicia, the Protagonist of River Mumma is not having the best time. Her life is not going as well as she would like it to, she's in a job she hates, and her college degree is not getting her the opportunities she hoped for. Also, she's at a party and is the most wall hugging wallflower to ever hug a wall due to a combination of stress and depression.

Then things get wild. On her way home from the party, she meets River Mumma, a Jamaican river goddess. The goddess' comb has been stolen by a tourist and she wants Alicia to get it back, or else. How she's meant to do this when she has no leads and is constantly under attack from duppies (evil spirits) and is--aside from some inherent spiritual talent--pretty ordinary is not exactly clear. Alicia is joined on her quest by two work-acquaintances, Heaven and Mars (short for Marcus), with various levels of enthusiasm and/or reluctance.

The trio wander around Toronto, get stuck in traffic and become extremely late for work. They also argue a lot about a great deal of things, but eventually get their acts together. In the process, Alicia learns that that there are specific reasons why she was chosen to find the comb, and gradually achieves a certain amount of wisdom and self-knowledge. (As often happens when you get sent on a quest.)

I found this novel to be a little slow in places. There is a lot of squabbling and impatience as Alicia and company get stuck in traffic, encounter evil spirits, and receive increasingly annoyed phone messages from work and relatives. I did like the way Alicia slowly realizes that she has a closer friendship with her two coworkers than she thought she had. I also liked the interactions between the characters and the references and uses of Jamaican history, folklore and spiritual beliefs. The dialog might be a little hard to parse: most of it is in the Jamaican Patois, except when one of the characters is code-switching. (A glossary would have been helpful.)

I really liked the book, which has a lot of of wit and humor to it. There are some very fun moments as things get increasingly dire for the trio. I liked the character interactions, and while the squabbling could get irritating, it really did fit in with the underlying concept of "these are more or less ordinary people and they've been sent on a magical fetch quest with very little knowledge and no leads."

I particularly liked this book because it does some interesting things with the urban fantasy subgenre. The setting somewhere between "magic is secret and under the surface of things" and "magic is blatant and as present as cars and refrigerators." (Though in this case it's not so much hidden as wilfully ignored.) The themes of this book are tied to colonialism and cultural appropriation, and the narrative does a good job of integrating the themes with the main plot. I recommend this book for anyone who might like an African Diaspora themed urban fantasy with ordinary characters being nudged (herded, drafted, harassed) into doing extraordinary things.

This review is based on a galley copy received from NetGalley.

Forget about mid-life crisis…how about a quarter-life crisis! This rings so true for many of us; trying to find our way at the quarter point in life when we’re still trying to figure out what just happened previously. Plus, add in a Jamaican water diety and you have the perfect recipe for chaos. Enter River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta who dives deep, yes pun intended! into the spiritual mis-adventures of a young black woman trying to figure it all out. I generally liked this novel full of energetic and vibrant imagery with ancestral ties to Jamaica. With a strong female lead, Alicia, takes us on a journey with her friends to solve a mythical quest. Although it had a few slow parts, it generally kept my attention but felt very rushed toward the end which didn’t allow for much character depth. However, the novel is beautifully written and more plot-focused than anything else so I definitely recommend it for your next magical realism read.

Thank you to Penguin Canada for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This sounded so interesting and it did not disappoint. I loved the blend of folklore and real world aspects and was able to learn more about Jamaican folklore. It's very clear the subject is near and dear to the author which made reading this story an absolute blast. I finished it so quickly and can't wait to reread it again in the future.

I haven't read many books that take place in Canada with such detailed folklore, so this read was a nice change of pace. I love fantasy stories where the main female character struggles with insecurity, specifically with believing in herself. Also, I love that characters in books are no longer just going on adventures when they're kids. I find it much more believable that a 25 year old can save the world over a 12 year old! 25 year olds deserve to be chosen for quests too! As someone who is currently 24 years old and living at home, I immediately gravitated towards Alicia's story. Her story is ideal for young women looking for that life spark that they've lost (or are experiencing burnout from adulting). I fell in love with the magical realism genre as a kid, and I still love it. This read is perfect for fans of Kelly Barnhill's "When Women Were Dragons" and Raquel Vasquez Gilliland's "Witch of Wild Things."

I love the idea of this book but the way it was told troubled me. I just simply don't like it.
The pacing felt off and I don't like the writing at all. Way too much slang that I don't understand at all.

The connection between folklore and the real world was so out of pocket. The author didn't explain why the main character was like that in the first place and it was just beyond confusion.

Everything just didn't work for me.

I absolutely loved reading this book. The characters were all so amazing and their relationships with each other were very deep. The plot of this book was so interesting and I loved learning more about Jamaican culture through this. I found it such a creative idea.

So, this book is about this girl who is seen by River Mumma, of Jamaican folklore. River Mumma, meant to guard the waters and rivers of the world, had something stolen from her, and now her chosen must get it back in time before the water runs dry globally.

This story jumped into action right from the get-go, with a small sense of foreshadowing before the character is very nearly drowned. The suspense and anticipation at the idea of danger hiding around any corner from other visits by other Jamaican myths gave me such anticipation; this definitely was a story to not put down.

The action scenes were so excellently portrayed. You got a strong sense of the feelings of the characters in action while also commencing action. As said before, it really brought the suspense and anticipation to life.

The emotions portrayed by the characters were amazing as well, and we really got a sense of their reactions and well-being. The character growth of our trio was astronomical, and it's amazing how the author was able to give us this without it feeling forced or rushed within just 150 pages, even with all the action and context needed to be written out.

My favorite part was the history tied within the story. Because the characters are also of Jamaican heritage, we see that their ancestors have experiences and interaction with the River Mumma. I always love a good backstory, the when we later find out just how tied the past is with the present, it gave the plot so much more intricacy. Again, I'm just amazed all of this was done within the 150 pages.

Overall, this was an amazing quick read, full of different elements to appease any reading slump. I loved the historical context and the Jamaican folklore. I lived the characters and the portrayal of their relationships. This was an amazing book, and I definitely hope to read more by this author.

Alicia is feeling lost and disillusioned when the Jamaican water deity River Mumma tasks her with retrieving her golden comb in 24 hours… or else. This sends Alicia and her friends on a whirlwind chase through Toronto in pursuit of the comb. Hunted by malevolent spirits, Alicia must reconnect with her Jamaican heritage if she hopes to succeed.

I really felt like I could see parts of myself in all three of the main characters. I think that a lot of millennials will be able to relate especially to Alicia. River Mumma was a really fun, fast paced read that still had substance. I would absolutely recommend checking it out!

Thank you to Kensington Books and NetGalley for the eARC. This is my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Wow, what a debut! I really love exploring mythology and diversifying my bookshelf, and this book helped me do so. I really enjoyed reading this debut that weaves a tale through Jamaican culture and folklore. And with great writing and evocative description, I was really pulled into this world.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta dives deep into Jamaican folklore and takes the reader on a quest of a lifetime. It explores connection, diaspora, and the ancestral ties we all feel tugging on us.

As my first foray into Jamaican literature, it was difficult to find my reading groove at first but once I did, I enjoyed the world the author weaved. The nuanced elements she pulled from her culture lent to the authenticity of her tale and made the experience feel so immersive.

I gave this book a four-star rating because the author did a phenomenal job of writing a fast-paced, intricate, and distinctive storyline. I believe anyone, regardless of their culture, will find a kinship in the themes of friendship, displacement, and familial history that the author navigates in this book. Such an enjoyable read!

The secret ingredient in this book is love. I’m being so serious. From the very first chapter I could feel the love the author had for her culture through the page. It made the entire book so warm.
I felt solidarity with Alicia as a fellow retail worker. I related to her so deeply. Alicia was a great mc to explore that quarter-life existential crisis with.
I liked the very real fear you could feel from the characters when they were in dangerous situations.
I enjoyed the way the fantasy elements were woven into a modern landscape as the characters move through it. Alicia’s visions throw you into the past and then spit you right back out into Toronto.
This book was fast paced, engaging, and had great main characters. It could have lingered on its characters more, but I liked the length.

This one was done with a love for Jamaican culture and as a Jamaican I thoroughly loved it. If you are interested in urban fantasy or love Jamaican culture read this book. I enjoyed the intense adventure that Alicia, Heaven and Mars experienced.

And as a Jamaican who felt she knew the culture I learned something new. I'd never heard of Whooping Boy before.

I recommend this for readers who love Jamaica and enjoy urban fantasy

I liked this a lot, the characters and the plot was just amazing. The way everything happened had me hooked like aaaa
thank you netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review

River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta is a wonderful story of friendship and family that mixes Jamaican folklore into the fabric of Gen Z culture in Toronto, Canada.

Alicia finds herself at a crossroads where many early 20 year olds find themselves when they graduate college. Out in the world, Alicia feels stale and depressed but things change when the river deity, River Mumma chooses her to find her lost golden comb. If Alicia fails then the rivers will dry and everything bad will follow suit.

During her quest, Alicia finds power and strength with the help of friends to overcome her self doubts. River Mumma proves that everyone has a connection to their family’s traditions and heritage no matter how far removed they may feel.

I found River Mumma fast paced and highly engaging. I would recommend this one to anyone in their 20’s that feels lost or on the precipice of change. Zalika Reid Benta’s retelling of Jamaican folklore is absolutely captivating and it left me wanting to learn more of Jamaican history or mythology.

Thank you to Penguin & Netgalley for giving me this opportunity to read and review this novel.

I thought I would love that book. I love the general idea and messages it had and I was impatient to know more about Jamaican deities... but the pace and lack of stakes, detached storytelling tone, noninvolvement of the characters just made it hard to continue reading. I felt like nothing significant was happening despite a lot of action... If felt like it should all have been high stake but wasn't, and that was weird.
but the book isn't badly written and had a lot of great voice moment with attitude, but others might like it better.

4 stars for the quality and the good times, though I did struggle to connect with this one. Which is surprising, because there are lots of millennial vibes and generational feelings, which I can relate to, but maybe there were too many Toronto-specific references for me, a non-Torontonian. For example, I probably didn't need to know (what felt like) every street name on a particular journey. But, if I lived in Toronto, perhaps I would find the constant references truly immersive in building an experience.

This was very well-written. I loved the mixture of Jamaican folklore and contemporary characters - Alicia, Heaven, and Mars are very modern characters, no doubt about it. They were a lot of fun, even if this book was more plot-oriented than character-oriented.

I was surprised by how much of an adventure novel this was. I don't know why, as I feel the description is pretty clear that Alicia is on a QUEST, but I still was surprised - in a good way! This was fast-paced and pretty captivating right away.

I do wish there had been some moments to breathe and to get to know the characters. I'm more of a character-driven reader, and so I feel like I personally will struggle to remember much about this one in a few months, as enjoyable as it was to read at the time.

So rounded up to 4 stars, but I don't feel bad about doing so.

<i>Thank you to the publishers, Kensington Books and Erewhon Books, and to NetGalley for the ARC.</i>

This was a fantastic read! The perfect magical realism story, I love a quest with a deadline. I also appreciated the "It was just a dream/Am I crazy?/No, this is real" shifts for each character, which can be a tricky transition to pace but I found it was done beautifully. This is a great rec for both magical realism fans and newbies!

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this ahead of publication in exchange for my honest review. I really liked River Mumma, it wasn't a culture I was familiar with, and I really loved that fresh take and new flavor that it brought. I thought it was fresh, and I really loved the MC's!

3.5 Stars - Rounding Up to 4 Stars. This is a fresh story with vibrant characters, a vibrant world, and a fully fleshed out world. I loved reading the Jamaican folklore as it's so different from anything else I've read recently. Where I feel this novel could have used some work was with the pacing of dialogue and usage of slang, it made it a little stilted and could really pull me out of the world because it didn't feel entirely natural. Overall, a great debut.
Thank you for the opportunity to review this as an eARC!
https://hausofroses.blogspot.com/2023/08/earc-review-river-mumma.html

This book had a lot of promise but ultimately fell short of the mark.

I enjoyed the magical realism and how Jamaican folklore/legend was incorporated into the story. The protagonist, Alicia, struck a chord with me as I empathized with her struggles to adapt after graduating from university.

Regrettably, the promise of the book wasn't fully realized in its plot. Rather than embarking on an enthralling journey, the plot resembled a lackluster side quest from a video game, the kind that involves mundane tasks to fill time.

The comb is, for all intents and purposes, a MacGuffin. The only reason it’s important is because its owner is a deity, the River Mumma, who has threatened a massive drought if it is not returned by an arbitrary (by their own admission) deadline. This isn’t necessarily bad but it leads to a lack of investment, on the part of the reader, in the goal of the quest. So without a particularly compelling goal, all that’s left is the journey which, unfortunately, isn’t particularly interesting either. Most of the quest to find the comb consists of Alicia, Mars, and Heaven traveling from point A to B.

The main character, Alicia, is never challenged in any way since each obstacle is solved by either looking information up online or running away. Alicia never has to use any particular skills or even be clever to solve a problem or move the quest forward. This in turn led Alicia to lack a certain sense of agency since she’s always just responding to things that happen to her.

Curiously absent is a substantial antagonist since the person who stole the comb doesn’t particularly care about keeping it, while the pursuing duppies merely offer mindless opposition. The duppies sort of just appear whenever the story needed some action but it never feels like they present any significant threat. Every duppy has the same two weakness which is that they must stop to count whatever is thrown in their path and they dislike salt.

The pacing of this story also felt off. One of the reasons for this was how often the story stopped in its tracks to make some little inside joke or reference for fellow Torontonians. While I personally understood the references, I don’t think someone not from Toronto would. I’m surprised they didn’t make a joke about Tim’s iced coffee tasting different every time. Though I lived in Toronto for many years, even I found these asides distracting. It’s not any less annoying than when New Yorkers do it!

The other issue with the pacing was how elements of the story connected, or rather failed to connect, with each other. For example, Alicia experiences visions of the memories of her ancestors. These visions take up a lot of pages and serve to explain Alicia’s ancestors’ connection to River Mumma. However, the visions don’t explain why Alicia, specifically, was chosen for this specific quest since her ancestors have no connection to the comb. The visions provide no information to help Alicia and her friends find the comb. The entire story also takes place within an extremely short time frame (around 24 hours). These two facts combined with how the story starts off pretty slow and takes a while to ramp up, the actual quest to retrieve the comb was given relatively few pages and thus the resolution seemed fairly rushed. In fact, for the first 2/3 of the book, they make no progress on finding who stole the comb (the first step in retrieving the comb), but this is solved for the characters by deus ex machina. So the whole quest takes up only 1/3 of the book.

This book also features a certain Toronto-based celebrity rapper who remains unnamed but it’s extremely obvious who it is. I admit that I found this pretty funny when it was first revealed but the joke quickly got old. It ended up being pretty gimmicky and the whole encounter felt really forced (we’re supposed to believe that this huge celebrity is checking their DM requests 24/7).

Finally, at least half of the dialogue is in Jamaican patois (and/or Toronto slang) and if you, like me, are not fluent, it might take you a second to understand what the characters are saying. This linguistic barrier disrupts the reading flow and comprehension.

In sum, magical realism and the representation of Jamaican culture and folklore shine, yet the weak plot and pacing pitfalls tarnish the overall experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was a quick and entertaining read, especially since I don’t know a lot about Jamaican or Canadian culture (though fortunately did know enough to enjoy the celebrity cameo!). The characters were well developed despite the brevity, although I almost wish the book had been longer so there could have been a little more time with them without life or death stakes.