Hurricane Summer

Tilla has spent her whole life trying to earn her father's love. Every six months he leaves the family and goes back to what he treats as his true home, the island of Jamaica. Her mother now tells her she will spend the summer there.

Tilla dreads seeing him again, yet she wants to learn what the island has always held for him. Once she arrives, events turn unexpectedly, and she has to face a storm in her own life while a hurricane gathers over the island.

Beneath the paradise she expected, Tilla uncovers dark secrets. The book is a coming-of-age story told through her experience of a strained father-daughter relationship, a first young love, and the pressures of colorism and classism.

The setting is Jamaica, and the approaching hurricane gives the summer its deadline and its mood. Expect an emotionally heavy read in which a teenage girl tries to find her own voice while the people and places around her come apart. It is a young adult novel, suited to readers looking for a serious treatment of family, wealth, gender and color.