After her parents go on the run, a teenage girl placed in the care of a cousin she barely knows learns to trust and open up in The Melancholy of Summer, a lyrical YA contemporary coming-of-age story by Louisa Onome

Doesn’t she see? I can do this on my own.

Summer Uzoma is fine. Sure, her parents left her behind when they went on the run after being accused of committing a crime last year. Sure, she’s been alternating stays at her friends Sid and Tanya’s houses. Sure, she sometimes still secretly visits her old house. And sure, she has trouble talking about any of this. But she’s fine. She has her skateboard and bus pass and the beach. She just has to turn eighteen in a few weeks and then she’ll officially be an adult. She’ll really and truly be free.

So it’s extra annoying when a nosy social worker gets involved and insists on finding a relative to take Summer in and to figure out her funding for college, as if the rest of her family didn’t abandon her just like her parents did. Summer doesn’t expect any of them to be available, so she’s very surprised to hear that she’ll be living with her cousin Olu–someone she hasn’t seen in years, who’s only a year older, and who’s a famous singer in Japan last she heard.

Life with Olu is awkward, partly because Olu has her own drama to deal with but largely because Summer no longer knows how to let people in. And what’s the point anyway, when they’re always leaving? Even Sid and Tanya will be going off to college, something Summer isn’t sure she actually wants anymore. With Olu, Sid, and Tanya’s efforts, can Summer learn to open up again?