This book was beautifully written. I appreciated how the stories subtly connected together, but once I stopped trying to keep all the characters straight - and read it more like just a short story collection - it was easier for me to enjoy.

I included spoken word poet Ama Asantewa Diaka’s brilliant Woman, Eat Me Whole in my 2022 Poetry for the Rest of Us column, and unsurprisingly, she’s able to convey a similarly powerful and lyrical style in this collection of short stories. Candid and interconnected, the stories feature young Ghanaians through joy and pain, despair and repair, hardship and hope.

cw: sexual assault, suicide, rape

thank you to @netgalley and @amistad for the review copy 🩷

this collection of interconnected short stories about the lives of Ghanaian youth explores the complexities of what it means to be a human being, our brokenness, the ways we hurt each other, the ways we get in our own way. how we navigate romantic, platonic, and familial relationships, through shame and neglect and trauma, through misogyny and body shame and low self-esteem

“there’s something about brokenness that makes you want to pass your fingers on cracked surfaces and trail them on their sharp edges, you know?”

This novel offers an introspective glimpse into young Ghanaian characters navigating life via friendships, romances, and the remnants of trauma. The stories are grounded in everyday/common circumstances which make them relatable and easily readable. The interconnectedness lends a sense of community – albeit, I might have missed some connections. A nice offering with a splash of “freshness;” I would read the author again.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollinsPublishers for the advance reader copy. This is my honest review.

I am so thankful to Amistad Books, Ama Asantewa Diaka, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital access to this beautiful collection of poetry before it hits shelves on April 2, 2024. I was captivated by the narrative and couldn't get enough.

Sometimes overlapping short stories about young people and relationships in Ghana, mainly focused on love gone wrong and unwanted pregnancies

Stunning prose, but a little disjointed. Overally enjoyed this but would have like a bit more cohesion, either way I will be singing the praises of this based on the writing alone!

3.5/5 stars,

I really liked the writing style of this book and found all the characters to be unique but yet relatable in some way. I had a tough time following the subtle interconnectedness of the characters so I mostly treated it like several separate short stories which means they didn't have a fullness/completion to them. Overall it was enjoyable.