As her daughter prepares to go abroad for uni, each night Jihad tells her a story from her life…

Jihad’s life story with her family’s displacement from Palestine to Kuwait to Jordan and her later move to Dubai were interesting to read about. The stories are filled with family dynamics, details of everyday life within their community of Palestinian refugees and women trying to make ends meet and run their homes with never quite enough resources.

I really wanted to love it, but there was something missing for me, and I’m struggling to put my finger on precisely what. Maybe it’s that I didn’t really click with the storytelling style - there was no preamble to the overall story and without reading the blurb, I’m not sure I’d have cottoned on until near the end that the book is Jihad telling her daughter a series of stories. Instead, I felt as if I’d been dropped into the middle of the overall story and never quite found my footing.

A Palestinian diaspora story rich with details of everyday life and family dynamics - interesting yet a little lacklustre.