Vivek Shreya is working with Arsenal Pulp Press (of endless Lammy nominations fame) to create an imprint of up and coming queer authors of colour, and this is the first book to come out of that.

Each chapter forms its own short story with a complete narrative, but all of them following after each other in the first person narration of the protagonist. Our heroine is a Congolese immigrant growing up in Scarborough via absent parents, drugs and sex work. Most of the focus is on her friendships, romances and family relationships, and there are lot of great relationship sketches and characterisation, but on the whole the book left me a little cold. I felt like Mutonji was a little caught up in a prose style that's popular in CanLit right now, and would have liked to see something more original, and I didn't always feel invested in the protagonist (maybe because I couldn't tell where the author ended, and the character started). This is where I was with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's first book, so I think if Mutonji keeps going and keeps getting this kind of support, I'll like her future books more.