This was a really enjoyable book! Though the protagonist is in her twenties, it is very much a coming-of-age novel in all the best ways: getting your first apartment, working in an entry-level job where you feel unappreciated, figuring our friendship and love and sex. Layer onto those pivotal moments of identity formation a complex postcolonial identity as a Ghanaian-American with a semi-absent mother and a father with Parkinsons, and you have quite the unique journey.

My only complaint is that a few coincidences seemed a little too improbable. I much more related to the protagonist when she rose up against the chaotic world and found herself.

There is so much to love about Maame: her innocence-meets-experience moments, her desire to see the good in the world, and her openness to change. It’s really quite a lovely book.