Some books announce their intentions in the first line. The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis opens with its narrator shuffling her absent mother’s tarot deck and asking the ancestors for guidance, and in that single image you already have the whole novel: a girl clinging to borrowed wisdom because she has not yet learned to trust her own. Davis, whose debut All the Noise at Once won the Morris Award, returns with a summer story that is part diaspora homecoming, part queer awakening, and part detective hunt for a mother who may not want to be found. It mostly earns its emotional payoffs, though a few plot conveniences and a slow middle stretch keep it just shy of flawless.
The Setup: One Letter, Five Weeks, Too Many Questions
Jaliya Powell is the valedictorian nobody remembers. She aced high school in Florida, got teased for her ackee and saltfish breakfasts, and turned down bigger colleges out of quiet fear. Then a water-damaged, unsigned letter arrives, and she convinces herself it came from the mother who left when she was four. So she flies to Jamaica for one last summer with her uncle’s family, officially to relax before college, secretly to track down the woman whose pictures still cover her uncle’s walls.
What she finds instead is a country that moved on without her. Her cousin Shevaughn is cold and guarded. Her childhood crush Andre is taller, kinder, and taken. And then there is India, a loc-wearing, rule-bending girl one block over who feeds Jaliya jerk pork with her fingers and asks questions nobody else dares to. The love triangle the title promises is really a triangle of selves: the safe, familiar life Andre represents versus the terrifying, electric one India offers.
What Works Beautifully
The strongest praise I can give The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis is that Jamaica never feels like a backdrop. It smells like scallion and Scotch bonnet, sounds like competing backyard DJs, and tastes like Devon House ice cream eaten somewhere you are not supposed to be. Davis writes the island with the specific, complicated love of someone raised inside it, and her author’s note confirms exactly that.
A few elements deserve individual mention:
The tarot chapter structure. Every chapter is named for a card, from The Hermit to The World, and the pulls quietly chart Jaliya’s shift from outsourcing her decisions to owning them. It is clever without ever turning gimmicky.
The cousin subplot. Shevaughn’s storyline, which I will not spoil, gives the book its heaviest and most honest material about being queer in a deeply religious country. Davis refuses to soften the danger or the church culture that produces it, yet she also refuses to write Jamaica as a villain.
The dad. Jaliya’s father is one of the warmest single parents in recent YA, a man who cooks guilt-trip breakfasts and answers every insecurity with “you’re enough.” Their phone calls carry real weight.
The diaspora ache. “Too American for the people here, too Jamaican for the people at home” is the wound the whole book presses on, and it presses honestly, through small humiliations like a mispronounced patois word or a side-eye at church.
The Romance, Handled with Care
Jaliya’s slow realization that she is attracted to both a boy and a girl unfolds through hesitation, denial, and one unforgettable game of Never Have I Ever in an abandoned church. Davis lets the confusion be genuinely confusing. There is no instant label, no tidy speech, just a girl noticing that one person feels like a warm couch and the other feels like jumping off a cliff into cold blue water. The metaphor-heavy coded conversation Jaliya and her cousin share about “cars and trucks” is both funny and quietly heartbreaking, exactly the register this subject deserves.
Where the Novel Stumbles
An honest review of The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis has to admit that the mother-hunt plot creaks in places. The clues arrive with suspicious convenience: a stationery emblem instantly recognized, a photograph pinned to exactly the right corkboard, a hospital records room guarded by nothing but luck. One mid-book caper involving a stolen ID badge asks for more suspension of disbelief than a contemporary novel should need, and readers who guess the letter’s true origin early (many will) may find the final reveal more inevitable than surprising.
Other rough edges worth flagging:
A saggy middle. Chapters eleven through sixteen drift into travelogue mode. The barhopping, the waterfalls, and the beach cookout are all vividly written, but the search stalls so often that momentum leaks out of the central mystery.
A cardboard girlfriend. Andre’s girlfriend Dina exists purely as an obstacle. She gets no scenes, no voice, and no fair treatment, which slightly undercuts the book’s otherwise generous view of people.
Convenient exits and entrances. Adults appear at doorways at precisely the wrong moments so often that it starts to feel like stagecraft, and one best-friend conflict back in Florida resolves itself almost entirely offscreen.
India’s perfection. For most of the book India functions as an oracle who always says the exact right thing. Her own backstory eventually complicates her, but she could have used a real flaw sooner.
None of this sinks the book. It does mean the plotting never quite matches the quality of the character work.
Voice and Craft
How Davis Actually Writes
“The Lovers, the Liars, and Me” runs on first-person present tense, chatty and self-interrupting, full of asides like “It’s giving airhead, but we’re fine. We’ll recover.” That voice will delight teen readers and may occasionally grate on adults, but it is consistent, distinct, and frequently funny. Davis also has a real gift for sensory pacing: quiet domestic scenes of forming dumplings beside an aunt sit next to breathless chase sequences, and both feel lived-in. Patois appears naturally in dialogue without translation or apology, a choice that respects the reader.
One Small Craft Note
The recurring physical tic of Jaliya pulling at her fingertips appears often enough to become noticeable. It is a minor thing, but sharp-eyed readers will start counting.
Who Should Read This Book
Hand this novel to readers who loved messy, food-filled, identity-driven summer stories, to first-generation kids who have ever felt like guests in their own culture, and to anyone questioning their sexuality who needs to see that confusion written with patience instead of panic. The romance stays at the kissing level, and the heavier content (homophobia, parental abandonment, underage drinking, grief) is handled with visible care, making it right for readers fourteen and up.
Similar Books to Read Next
Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield, another Jamaica-set story of a diaspora girl confronting family secrets
Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie, for a similarly tender bisexual awakening in the final stretch of high school
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus, for Caribbean queerness, spirituality, and first love
You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson, for a Black queer heroine learning to take up space
All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis herself, if you want to see where this author started
Final Verdict
The Lovers, the Liars, and Me by DeAndra Davis is a warm, honest, occasionally over-convenient coming-of-age novel that cares far more about who Jaliya becomes than about the mystery that sets her moving, and that turns out to be the right priority. The mother plot wobbles; the self-discovery lands. Come for the love triangle, stay for the jerk pork, and leave thinking about all the people who mothered you without the title. Readers wanting airtight plotting should adjust expectations. Readers wanting a heroine who finally learns to pull her own cards will close this book satisfied.