Title: Mash Up Love
Author: Alexia Arthurs
In: How to Love a Jamaican (Alexia Arthurs)
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Contemporary, Race
Pace: Slow
Format: Short story
Year: 2018

It took me a little while to “click” with what was going on in this story. Mainly because the author is female, the narrator in the first story of this collection is female. But the voice of this story is male. Once the penny dropped (I mostly blame the delay on baby brain), I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I know next to nothing of Jamaica. Besides Cool Runnings, so nothing. It was fun to read a story that was set in everyday, familial life there. The simplicities of everyday life seem so simple, until you look at them from the outside. And I was intrigued.

There was such a powerful underlying pain throughout this story. It was about life and love, but there was also this feeling of being inadequate. Wondering why the good wasn’t acknowledged when the bad so often was. And how this maelstrom of emotions can combine into a complex, mash up love.

Image source: Goodreads