A transformative love story about two best friends who fall for each other, fall apart and try to find their way back together in their tight-knit British-Jamaican community.

South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down, preferably in a book. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed.

Daphne’s attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small in every way: lanky, outgoing, and unapologetically himself. Daphne tries to keep her distance, but Connie is magnetic, and they form an intense bond. As they navigate growing up in a volatile, rapidly changing city, theior families become close and their friendship begins to shift into something more complicated. When Connnie reveals that his mother “nut land”—meaning they’re in England illegally—Daphne realises that she is dangerously entangles in Connie’s fragile home life. Soon, long buried serects in both families threaten to tear then apart permanently.

Spanning one tumultuous decade, from the industrial docklands of the Thames to the sandy beaches of Calabash Bay, Jamaica Road is a deftly plotted and emotionally expansive novel about race and class, the family you’re born with and the family you choose, and the limits of what true love can really conquer.