This is the kind of book that I spend much of the time fighting myself to slow down, relish every gorgeous word, but being entirely unable to do so, surrendering to the inexorable pull to just keep turning each page at a breakneck speed because I just can't put the book down.

I absolutely adored this book. I read Homegoing a couple years ago and had meant to read this one for a while but just never got around to it. I'll read *anything* this author writes. She has an absolutely magical way of making every character a three dimensional person who feels like they're in the room with you while you read about them. The non-linear way that we hear Gifty's story, out of order snippets expertly placed at just the right moment in the narrative arc of the book, felt like we the readers are truly inside her mind with her as she sorts out her own story that she hasn't actually shared with anyone in her own life in its entirety. 

The explorations of mental illness, addiction, and religion are just so beautiful and visceral. I don't really have enough words to describe all the feelings this book made me feel. I'm sad the book is over because even though I tore through it in less than twenty four hours (see earlier note about trying as hard as I could to slow down but being entirely unable to), everything about the book was just so *real* that it feels like I'm saying goodbye to people I know by putting the book back on the shelf until the next time I reread it. Instant contender for top 10 of 2024.