William C. Morris Award winner DeAndra Davis's sophomore YA title, The Lovers, the Liars, and Me, is a moving coming-of-age novel featuring a Jamaican American teen searching for her estranged mother.
When 17-year-old Jaliya was four, her mother left her and her dad in Florida, returned to Jamaica, and cut off all contact. "The sting of abandonment" has never gone away, and when Jaliya receives a tattered, unsigned letter in the mail with an unreadable return address, she believes the letter is from her mother. "I want to see you soon," it says, "and I'm hoping we can make that happen." Jaliya accepts her dad's offer to visit family in Jamaica before college and is excited to be a sleuth. She is unprepared, though, for the changes since she last visited seven years ago. Her beloved cousin, Shevaughn, is standoffish; her longtime crush, Andre, is unavailable; and her uncle seems angrier. Jaliya catches up with Shevaughn's friend Deon and is introduced to "drop-dead gorgeous" India. As Shevaughn and his friends help Jaliya search for her mother over the course of the balmy, extraordinary summer, Jaliya discovers she is attracted to India--around the same time that Andre becomes available.
The Lovers, the Liars, and Me is an excellent read for fans of Leah Johnson and Anna-Marie McLemore looking for a deeply authentic and reflective novel with an intimate first-person point of view that explores identity, sexuality, and family. Davis (All the Noise at Once) develops a multifaceted protagonist who seeks clarity--emotionally, culturally, and romantically--but finds as many questions as she does answers. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer