A solid debut novel, but not quite great.

This is the story of a Alicia, a young woman in her mid-twenties who is adrift: she is thousands of dollars into debt for a degree she doesn't use, has moved back in with her mother (who keeps texting her macabre news stories and/or items to pick up from the store) and the closest things she has to friends are two colleagues at the retail job she hates. She's not exactly the person you'd expect to be entrusted with a quest by a deity, but that's exactly what happens when River Mumma, the mermaid who controls Jamaica's rivers, orders her to retrieve her stolen comb.

This puts Alicia on a physical journey across the city of Toronto and a spiritual one in her family's past, reclaiming a lost ability she had at birth to see and sense spirits.

The novel is certainly well-written and well-crafted, but overall it lacks a certain spark. The only moments where it really sings are the scenes in which Alicia's spirit travels to a mythical version of Jamaica, where she comes into contact with the line of all the women who came before her.

The biggest issue is, I think, the contrast between the relatively short length, the tight deadline Alicia is given for her quest, the constant attacks by evil spirits that keep the group moving and the fact that this is, at its heart, a character-driven story. The characters are constantly overwhelmed and rushing around, at this doesn't allow for as much character depth and development as the story would need.

Overall this is a good book, and if it wasn't quite good enough to turn the author into an auto-buy one for me, I will certainly be keeping an eye on her future work.

As soon as I saw I was approved for this book, I started eating it up!
It was captivating from the first chapter. I loved how fast paced it was. The author did an amazing job weaving contemporary Toronto with Jamaican folklore.