Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger warning: Child sexual assault shown/depicted in the book and then later discussed.
This was a very hard book to read in places, but ultimately a very good one to read. It focuses on a Nigerian family living in America and there are of course some things/language I didn’t understand, but it’s easy to get the context of things based on other words or descriptions. That is not why I gave it four stars though. The only reason why I gave this four stars is that I thought that Akinola gave the parents outs with regards to the plot to not actually even discuss the things that went on with the oldest Longe sister, Sola. There is a bit of acknowledgement about what went on with her with her sister Anjola, but I honestly didn’t think it was enough. Also, Karen’s whole story-line felt very unfinished to me. After a while she was treated like filler and you again don’t have things wrapped up because she just decides to not tell her mother anything. Other than that, I thought that the story focusing on the four siblings: Sola, Anjola, Ola, and Karen was very good and you get character development throughout that you feel like you know all of them and feel at turns frustrated for them and at them. I just wish for the final thread the needle for two of the four characters.
Leave Your Mess at Home follows the Longe siblings. Sola, is newly arrived back in Chicago after dealing with the fallout of her longtime partner cheating on her and announcing to social media he has moved on. She doesn’t have any money and no degree. She’s estranged from her entire family for a lot of reasons and just doesn’t want to do anything. She ends up agreeing to see her younger sister Anjola for a hot minute, but it’s her sister Karen that grabs at her and makes he want to do more for her sister who is struggling with her identity. The book goes back and forth between October 20 and December 30 and follows all four siblings.
Sola’s return is the catalyst for everyone to start looking at themselves, but her story was the least interesting to me at the onset. I thought she was being a jerk, until Akinola slowly unspools what went on to have Sola become estranged from her family and why she ran away to California to be an influencer. She really does see people for who they are, and thought anytime she was around her siblings and not allowing them to play in her or their own faces was so good. I don’t want to give too much away, but I thought that everyone’s individual plots work great, but I do now say while writing this review, Ola really didn’t seem to mesh with the sisters plotlines at all. I don’t know if that was intentional. But in the end, he felt very outside their dynamic. I thought the flow of the book was really good. I didn’t get tripped up at all between following anyone since every character’s voice was so distinct. I didn’t need to look too hard to figure out if it was Sola, Anjola, Ola, or Karen speaking.
The setting of Chicago in this one though feels very far apart I think from Black Americans Chicago. There’s an acknowledgement there’s a divide between the African community versus Black community. There’s a plot point that really sets that up and I can’t say I was in love with that at all. I know that for some Africans there’s this whole you are not allowed to call yourself African Americans thing and God knows the ADOS people are just a hot freaking mess that I run away from anytime I meet any of them in the wild. It is very frustrating to me since hey, I am light skinned and get confused as another race all the time, but that stopped once I braided my hair during the summer. But there are the skin color wars Black people have going on and whose really Black and it’s 2026 and I want everyone to just knock it off frankly. White America sees us all as Black. And with the mess that Trump is doing to the Somali community in Minnesota, racism is racism is racism. Black people (African or not) don’t have to get into that mess with them. Okay, climbs off soap box.
The ending didn’t really feel earned for two out of the four characters. I think Anjola had the most realistic plot/ending. Next up was Sola. Ola, was a whole mess and needed smacked. And Karen, just felt stuck on.
