{ "item_title" : "Leave Your Mess at Home", "item_author" : [" Tolani Akinola "], "item_description" : "Warm, smart, hilarious, delicious, riveting.--Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy Powerful... There are multiple messes in Leave Your Mess At Home; I loved reading about every one of them.--Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of Real Americans **A Best Book of April: People, The Millions, Atlantic Journal-Constitution, The Root, Muses of Media**A Most Anticipated Book of 2026: Electric Lit, SheReads, HelloBeautiful, ScaryMommy The Longe siblings are really botching their parents' American Dream. Sola Longe, eldest daughter, estranged from the family, is secretly back home in Chicago for the first time in a decade. She's a newly single and recently disgraced influencer trying to quietly put her life back together again. The other three Longe siblings aren't doing much better. Anjola is in love with her best friend, who just got engaged to someone else; Karen, a college junior and the baby of the family, is grappling with her sexuality and self-image; and Ola, the golden child with a baby of his own on the way, is questioning his marriage and how to raise a Black son in America. Sola's unexpected return sets them on a crash course towards each other, and when the four siblings find themselves together again at their Nigerian immigrant parents' Thanksgiving table, a decade's worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore. In the wreckage of their fateful reunion, each Longe is forced to reckon with the past, take stock of what really matters, and find a way back to each other. Big-hearted, hilarious, and wise, Leave Your Mess At Home is a poignant exploration of forgiveness, unconditional love, and becoming who you want to be, asking the question: what do we owe to our families, and what do we owe to ourselves?", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/383/419/0593834194_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "25.48", "our_price" : "25.48", "club_price" : "25.48", "savings_pct" : "12", "savings_amt" : "3.52", "club_savings_pct" : "12", "club_savings_amt" : "3.52", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.00" } }

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As Tolani Akinola reminds us in her debut novel, for everything family members have in common—memories, traditions and of course, blood—there’s just as much, if not more, that they don’t share. In Leave Your Mess at Home, Akinola introduces the Longe siblings: four second-generation Nigerian American immigrants who must each confront how well or poorly the quest for the American Dream aligns with the reality of their life.

For over a decade, Sola—the second eldest of the four siblings—has been away from where they grew up in Chicago and estranged from her family. When she returns, she keeps her presence a secret, hoping she can recover from the traumatic unraveling of her influencer past and find a new purpose in life without having to face her family’s judgment. Ola, the eldest, seems to be on a clear path: He’s newly married, about to have a child and financially stable, yet he’s suddenly unsure if this is actually the life and love he wants. For Anjola, too, career success does not ensure happiness; she’s burned out from medical school and unable to acknowledge her feelings for her best friend. The youngest, Karen, is questioning her sexuality and her relationship to her Nigerian heritage as she makes her way through college.

Then, on that most American of days, Thanksgiving, the family reunites—to the surprise of some. Over the course of the fraught meal that follows, what becomes clear is that while they have all kept secrets, made their own narratives from the past and seen things differently, all the while they’ve missed each other and longed for moments of connection. 

There’s a tenderness to the Longe family, even amid their bitterest struggles. While the siblings are at the center of Leave Your Mess at Home, the Longe parents cast a long shadow, and their experiences as new immigrants trying to find their footing prove particularly compelling. Each of the family members works through shades of alienation to figure out what is owed and what is earned in this striking, smart debut.