Read from February 26th, 2024 to March 6th, 2024. Written on April 5th, 2024.

DNF at 7.5%

Don't know what I was expecting, but this book was just not doing it for me. It wasn't captivating me enough to want to keep reading.

(Free ARC from NetGalley and Faber and Faber Ltd that I chose to review after reading)

I really enjoyed this, it's a book that's been on my radar for a while but I'd never gotten around to picking up so thank you to netgalley for the chance to read this.

This is the story of Betty, her son Solo and their lodger/friend/father-figure/family, Mr Chetan. At it's heart, it's about family and love and the different forms it can take, set in mainly in Trinidad and partially in the US when Solo moves away from home.

Persaud does a great job at creating fully rounded characters, although I personally found Betty and Mr Chetan to be especially interesting. Their friendship and the way they become one another's family was so interesting to read about while both continued to live their lives, trying to love and dealing with Solo moving away.

I did, at first, think I would struggle with the lack of speech marks and the way the book is written in a Trinidadian dialect but actually I very quickly got used to it as sometimes I can find things like that distracting or off putting in a book, but in this one I think it's a testament to how good Persaud's writing is that I quickly got used to it and it didn't bother me.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for Persaud's next novel, The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, when it is released in April.

Love After Love follows Mr Chetan, Betty and Betty's son Solo, showing how their lives and relationships with each other evolve over a long period of time. There are so many important and difficult topics covered here - family issues, domestic violence, death, love, self acceptance, racism, homophobia to name a few...

The book takes you on a really raw, painful and emotional journey. I felt a mixture of happiness, sadness, frustration, pain and anger throughout. However there's a good sprinkling of lighthearted one-liners thrown in as well.

I don't think I've read a book quite like this before and I'd say it's well worth picking up!