An enjoyable involving read. You are kept wondering what actually happened to Emma almost to the end. All the characters are clearly defined and hold your interest.

Yvonne is in her early forties, reminiscing about her friend from uni, Emma. Kiama is in his late teens, desperate to make sense of the tragedy that happened to him a decade earlier and robbed him of his mum.

It doesn’t sound like much of a story, but I really enjoyed this book. Luan Goldie has done a cracking job of juggling flashbacks, individual character voices and tough topics while driving the narrative forward.

Spoiler, but this happens pretty early on in the book so not a big surprise:

Emma is a character only in flashback, and as such we only see her through Yvonne and Kiama’s perspective. She is both affectionate and cold, borrowing everything of Yvonne’s as 18 year old students and never returning it. She’s proud of her Kenyan upbringing but ashamed that she’s a white Brit who emigrated with her parents, keen to make a Little England in the sunshine.

Yvonne is a hardworking youngest daughter, determined to make more of her life than her parents but not in an ungrateful way. She’s haunted by the grief of losing her best friend, and while in present day she is successful, her life is by no means perfect.

Kiama is the second narrator, a young man frustrated that he can’t stick to things and looking for answers in (mostly) the wrong places. He and Yvonne bond over a shared guilt, a love of the same woman and their experiences along the way, through this pilgrimage to Kenya.

I am not a fan of the Arundhati Roy type build up: ‘and then the TERRIBLE THING HAPPENED’, so I was really pleased that the tragedy at the heart of the book was revealed fairly quickly, with details becoming clearer until you get the whole picture. The layers and the difficulty in the lives of the characters, the decisions they made to get to that point, are satisfying to pull back as it all slots neatly into place. I will definitely keep an eye out for more from this author!

I really enjoyed this book - the characters are interesting and distinctive and the plot is well-crafted. We find out the history of Yvonne and Emma's friendship through a series of flashbacks which sometimes start abruptly. I was a little annoyed by Yvonne's failure to tell Emma about Lewis several times when she had an opportunity, but this was essential to the plot, as I found out later. Kiama is well-depicted as a confused teenager trying to find out who he really is. The ending was satisfying.

Netgalley very kindly sent me this book. I chose it because I thought much of it was set in Kenya and I love reading descriptions of countries I haven’t visited, but I was disappointed by the lack of description and atmosphere of that country.
I also didn’t really take to any of the characters.
That said, it was a great story and I enjoyed reading it.