From the very beginning, this author promises oddity and weirdness. (I do mean RIGHT from the beginning. Read the dedication. I don’t know who Rachel is but she sounds like the best frenemy an author ever had.)
Leon is your typical adolescent and we know that even without qualifiers like parental units, what grade he’s in or his age. He’s wired and overheated, annoyed at his pesky younger brother and wary about his supposed best friend, Henry. Henry is one of those secondary leads you read about in books like this or see in movies. Part goad, part jokester and part thorn in the side, Leon likes being around him…except when he’s in pursuit of a certain girl.
Having set the tone from the beginning as that of your average YA romance, the book abruptly sheers into terror territory and the author writes this almost like a jump scare. It comes out of nowhere and your stomach clenches in reflex at the unexpected shock.
Something has happened to Leon and we don’t know what it is. When the story cuts to Ife, we’re left reeling, transported in time and place. We’re almost immediately caught up in Ife’s drama. She’s the new kid in town and it shows. She’s struggling to catch up with the other students after missing all the classes the other students have taken; she’s trying desperately to be a good student and a good daughter to her Nigerian parents; she has few friends and she thinks a certain boy is cute but also a troublemaker.
The mood swings from the mundane to the horrific and back again, leaving the reader unsettled and off balance. In the midst of Ife’s angst, we are given a shocking glimpse into the life of one of the adults around her, making his pain and fury as immediate as hers.
So we have our feet set in two worlds, the immature and the grown. This is the typical realm of the teenager but I don’t often see it so explicit in contemporary literature as it is here. During a fraught confrontation in class, an aggrieved teacher confiscates Ife’s phone after it blares a song in class, leaving her wretched, shaken and in tears. He retreats with her phone, ranting about he gets no respect while she succumbs to teenaged angst at her sudden loss of connection with her friends back home. The teacher and student are both miserable but their misery divides them rather than brings them closer.
These opening chapters needle you, leaving you uneasy and unsettled. A masterful effort by Mr. Oyemakinde.
Leon is your typical adolescent and we know that even without qualifiers like parental units, what grade he’s in or his age. He’s wired and overheated, annoyed at his pesky younger brother and wary about his supposed best friend, Henry. Henry is one of those secondary leads you read about in books like this or see in movies. Part goad, part jokester and part thorn in the side, Leon likes being around him…except when he’s in pursuit of a certain girl.
Having set the tone from the beginning as that of your average YA romance, the book abruptly sheers into terror territory and the author writes this almost like a jump scare. It comes out of nowhere and your stomach clenches in reflex at the unexpected shock.
Something has happened to Leon and we don’t know what it is. When the story cuts to Ife, we’re left reeling, transported in time and place. We’re almost immediately caught up in Ife’s drama. She’s the new kid in town and it shows. She’s struggling to catch up with the other students after missing all the classes the other students have taken; she’s trying desperately to be a good student and a good daughter to her Nigerian parents; she has few friends and she thinks a certain boy is cute but also a troublemaker.
The mood swings from the mundane to the horrific and back again, leaving the reader unsettled and off balance. In the midst of Ife’s angst, we are given a shocking glimpse into the life of one of the adults around her, making his pain and fury as immediate as hers.
So we have our feet set in two worlds, the immature and the grown. This is the typical realm of the teenager but I don’t often see it so explicit in contemporary literature as it is here. During a fraught confrontation in class, an aggrieved teacher confiscates Ife’s phone after it blares a song in class, leaving her wretched, shaken and in tears. He retreats with her phone, ranting about he gets no respect while she succumbs to teenaged angst at her sudden loss of connection with her friends back home. The teacher and student are both miserable but their misery divides them rather than brings them closer.
These opening chapters needle you, leaving you uneasy and unsettled. A masterful effort by Mr. Oyemakinde.