I’m left with sixty minutes to pack up my worldly belongings and figure out whatever the fuck I’m supposed to do next,” says Elsie, before moving in with her childhood friend Juliet. And later, when Juliet is admitted to hospital after an accident, Elsie is there by her side, day after agonising day. Her fraught relationship with her parents becomes further strained as they vocalise their dissatisfaction with her lifestyle. I do think the book got better, with the second half feeling less ‘debut novel’ and more realistic, and whilst I was initially leaning toward a three star rating, I found myself thinking about Elsie and her narrative arc on and off for days after having finished the novel.

Rosewater is Liv Little’s debut novel and is equal parts a coming of age story and a contemporary romance.The dialogue is similarly overconstructed, especially in the case of Juliet, who sometimes speaks in lines from old romcoms (“I think that if you come here, kiss me and tell me how you absolutely can’t live without me …”). Little's exploration of mental health, independence, rebuilding one's confidence, resilience in hard times, family and found family were just a few themes that shone. Her relationship with her grandmother provided a different side to the enigmatic London setting the novel began with, but I loved their relationship and how they had more in common than Elsie originally thought.

By the end of the book, I was very invested in the characters, and was glad that the ending brought hope.This isn’t seminal poetry, but it’s an inspired move to include real verse, written by performance poet Kai-Isaiah Jamal, in the narrative. I feel like my review does not fully capture my feelings about the book but I would recommend this to a specific group of people. I did feel like the author tried to cover a lot of different themes and some I felt got glossed over. Dialogue Books said of the debut: “Featuring incredible poetry from Kai Isaiah Jamal, Rosewater is a remarkable, modern, multi-generational love story for readers of Queenie, Normal People and Rainbow Milk who will be enraptured by Liv’s original narrative and captivatingly distinctive voice. For fans of Bolu Babalola and Tia Williams comes a “tender, soulful, and sexy” (Phoebe Robinson) debut novel about finding love in an unexpected place.