This book provided such a lovely reading experience, it’s one I would wholeheartedly recommend and cannot wait to read more from McKenzie. 

It follows a decently large cast of characters for a relatively slim book starting with Christopher, an artist who’s recovering from a traumatic event, visiting his mother’s homeland of Jamaica. Here he stays with his agent Stephen’s relative Miss Della and what ensues is beautiful tale of an interconnected family including these but also Féliciane, another artist friend from France, her boyfriend Leroy, Christopher’s parents Herb and Eileen, Miss Pretty, an ageing ‘aunty’ living on the island, Justine, an inspiring artist who’s also trans and we get her perspective about being queer and visible in Jamaica, Alton, Miss Vera, Paul and many more. We journey in the USA, Jamaica and Europe too as despite losing people and going through negative life events (grief a prominent motif), the community and found family aspect shines through in this novel which is so joyful even with the sad parts. Many of the characters are artists and their love for this form is highlighted, it’s so nice reading about people’s passions and I cannot fault the experience of this book at all. 

I would maybe say some of the plotting and timeline is not that clear and I think it would’ve benefited from being a bit longer to fully round out what occurs which I felt was a littler underwhelming but otherwise really good.