This has some commonalities with Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X following a girl’s coming of age story featuring first gen problems in verse form.

However, Ada’s story takes a different track. Her name in Igbo means “first child” befitting how she shoulders the expectations and pressures of everyone else, trying to be a good Catholic girl. She is more than aware of the standards she’s suppose to follow, to be quiet, to be submissive, to pray.

But college is where she begins to find her path, and follow her passion to dance and feel in control of her body and find the courage to be herself.

With the verse, there is minimal text but the implications resonate as readers learn about her fraught relationship with her mother whose toxic bonds she must learn to cut, her father’s smothering religiousity that trap her and scare her to swallowing the secrets and traumas she experience.

There is a slight romance but that is simply a sweet unfolding in the background as she navigates her isolation and her boundaries. Additionally, through flashbacks and present-day, Iloh also touches on small town racism and loneliness in comparison to her time at Howard.

A quick, thoughtful read of an introspective coming of age.