THE PLOT: ‘My Life as A Chameleon’ by Diana Anyakwo is a young adult novel about a mixed-race girl from Lagos, Nigeria. The timeline alternates between 1990, where our protagonist Lily looks back on her life, and a chronological narrative from 1984 onwards, with scenes depicting Lily’s childhood. The book follows Lily’s coming-of-age journey from Lagos to Manchester as she must confront the family trauma that turned her life upside down. From finding her place in the world as a half-Irish, half-Nigerian girl to her parents’ mental health struggles, this is a novel about fitting in and the importance of standing out.

RATING: When I started reading this book, it was on track to be a potential five star. The writing is very impressive, hitting that sweet spot between literary and commercial, and the main character is loveable. As the youngest child in a big, mixed family that had more wealth and status before my birth, I identify with Lily and feel the themes of mental health, migration and family relationships are keenly observed. However, the lack of climax and abrupt ending meant it just fell shy of my top rating. This novel has so much promise but it doesn’t seem to fit the genre conventions of YA, which left me wanting a bit more drama/plot/conclusion. The scope is very wide and key areas like colourism and political instability could have been a bigger force in the novel. Despite this, I believe it’s an impressive debut that I’d certainly recommend and I’m interested to see what the author writes next.

GOOD BITS:  In my reviews I often criticise the use of first person, past tense because it takes me out of the action. However, I feel this book pulls it off and is a great example of how to keep the momentum. I think it works because the book feels a bit like diary entries or a character recounting her life in a therapy session. I also think the structure helps because there are super short chapters and the 1990 sections tend to only be a paragraph or two. I admire the way the author is able to immerse the reader in scene with such short chapters, which demonstrates that her word choices are powerful.

NOT SO GOOD BITS: There are many things I liked about the dual timeline but unfortunately it didn’t feel like it paid off at the end. I kept waiting for the timelines to clash or merge, and wanted a big climax or explanation of why the main character was looking back on her life in this way. Perhaps I overlooked something but I didn’t get any significance for the year 1990 specifically. Due to this, I think this book could have been linear with the foreshadowing and hindsight as a prologue or spliced at the beginning of each of part/section (rather than every chapter).

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to lovers of ‘What the Fireflies Knew’ by Kai Harris, ‘An Ordinary Wonder’ by Buki Papillon, and ‘The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney’ by Okechukwu Nzelu. Although these books aren’t all YA, they each have a teen/child protagonist and sit in a space that would resonate with readers of any age. They also deal with overlapping themes of identity, family trauma and mental health/addiction issues.

Thank you to Atom Books for my #gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was released in May 2023 and is available to order on my bookshop.org profile.