This was a difficult read. I love that it is written in the local dialect and is a family saga but then things started to tail off for me. I do love an unlikeable character but none of the characters had any redeeming qualities, which made it hard to stay invested. However it is a promising debut.

This was my first book set in Trinidad and Tobago and I appreciated all the different kinds of love portrayed in its pages.

Though I enjoyed this book much, I will warn you that the accent may take some getting used to. After some adjustment, it becomes natural.

The story focuses mostly on the meaning of family and how families function. The typical family consists of a mother, a father, and their children. But not all of those pairings are healthy. It's important to recognize that in today's diverse and fluid society, families can be formed in a variety of ways. It's not uncommon for familial ties to cease in ways other than death. A person's relationship with his or her family ends when he or she is rejected by that family, just as it does when a member of that family passes away.

This is a tale of marital violence, being a homosexual guy, an immigrant, a parent, and a widow. The book is about feeling hurt and frustrated. Long discussions of the allegedly widespread problem of self-mutilation are included.

The characters are all in search of fulfillment, but Mr. Chetan seems to be seeking in all the wrong places for it. He was unable or unable to embrace the reality that he had found love with Betty.

It's a fascinating look into the history and customs of the Indian community in Trinidad. It's incredibly dismal, yet it deals with many of the same issues that actual people do.

This was the second time I tried to read Love After Love and, for whatever reason, I cannot get into it at all! I think a lot of the disconnect for me comes from the writer trying to emulate the speech syntax of Trinidadians and the lack of quotation marks...something about the whole experience has kept me from becoming immersed in the story. Quite a few of my trusted reviewers have loved it, so I'm pretty sad it didn't work for me!

Interesting prose and a good exploration of love in many forms. The dialect is beautiful to read and brings to life the characters.

DNF - Did not finish. I decided to put down this Literary Fiction title. It was not for me. Thank you publisher and NetGalley for the early title!

I love stories that center on love and friendship in unconventional ways. This book doesn't shy away from dark themes, so don't let the setting and bright Caribbean cover fool you. It's stark and real and gutting and I was completely absorbed despite the time jumps, which normally aren't for me.

A lovely story of making your own family through choice and circumstances. Betty, her son Solo, and Mr. Chetan, their housemate, who becomes a father figure after Betty's marriage crumbles, and the three move from Trinidad to the US. The writing is wonderful, once you get used to the lack of quotation marks for dialog. In that aspect the audio version may have been more enjoyable for me. Still, you will not be able to put this one down.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, One World (Random House) for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a powerful and intense read. It was filled with emotion, relatable family drama, and humanity. I loved the flow of language and dialect, as well.

Ingrid Persaud's Love After Love is an emotionally challenging story, told from the first-person perspective of its three central characters, two of whom are related, and all of whom are a family.

The story is based in Trinidad, told - as I mentioned - in first person Trini English, which makes for some interesting and often very crisp reading. Their English is hardly flowing, rarely flowing and riddled with a unique dialect form of the language. Makes for some delicious reading, and brings a raw and fresh take - like listening to an old friend, sharing their tale by the fireside.

Betty is a widow with a painful past and a terrible secret. Her son, Solo is a headstrong but loving boy, who is still figuring out who he is in the world, and misses his Dad - very much. Mr. Chetan is their lodger, who sort of becomes a surrogate father to Solo, without any expectations of moving in with Mom - for reasons of his own. This trio makes for some interesting storyline twists, and once Betty's secret comes out, Solo moves out. Most of the story is of Solo, trying to make it in the real world, trying to be largely on his own but actually he relies on paternal uncle and his two cousins very much. They are his family, and he has no plans to ever go back to Trini.

The fact that the story is told from multiple first-person percpectives allows the author to show you each character's personal thoughts and deepest fears and motivations. You really see each person as they see themselves, without any falsehoods and no lying - for the most part.

There is a somewhat simplistic side story of Solo getting his growing-up lesson from the world-at-large that makes you cringe at his naivete, and then perhaps reflect on your own naivety when you'd have been his age (!). Some things never change.

Betty's narrative is understandly sad and lonely. She suffers the most, and somehow chooses to continue to try to be happy. That, in my mind, is the core driver of this book. Her optimism, her beliefs, her friendships, her honesty - she is the cornerstone of the story.

Mr. Chetan forms the third part of this triangle, and his backstory - while equally poignant and perhaps even a bit harrowing, feels somewhat glossed over. Or watered down, at other times. There is an ominous background that gets a passing mention now-and-then, but in no way prepares you for the tragedy that strikes later on. In fact, IMHO, while the closing of the book was well written, it felt disjointed from the mood and the flow of the rest of the storyline. Granted life is not a story, and so wouldn't be expected to follow a script, while reading a story one would expect some more context as to what really happened, and why. Perhaps, since we're dealing with only three first-person narratives all through, we never really get to know the other sides to the tale.

I can accept that.

The denouement between Betty and Solo is also quite weak. The arguments given to Solo can't possibly be enough, and it is impossible to concieve he hadn't been given those earlier by Mr. Chetan. For all the angst and hatred that's freely sprinkled throughout the book, the ending seemed too fit.

Other than those minor complaints, this is a marvelously written book, about a culture that has not had enough representation in mainstream popular works of fiction. Even though the subject matter was not exactly new, the perspective was fresh, and that made all the difference.

Ingrid Persaud's insightful, multilayered, and heartbreaking novel about family incisively depicts the chaotic nature of love in it's myriad of forms, the price it exacts, the pain, within families, a mother's all encompassing love for her son, the love of friends but does not dwell on the rose coloured romantic love. In a immersive story set in Trinidad, a Caribbean island paradise, a veritable Garden of Eden of beauty, but blighted with its darkness, harbouring its own serpents that lurk below.

There are so many layers to this story and it's characters. The story begins as Betty Ramdin's husband dies and she invites a colleague, Mr.Chetan to move in with her and her son Solo. They form their own little family unit with Mr. Chetan becoming a strong father figure to Solo and someone Betty can depend on. Solo has a loving relationship with his mother but that relationship is fractured when Solo overhears a secret that his mother has been keeping. The secret involves his dad and Solo is so devastated it sends his life spinning out of control. He leaves his home and family in Trinidad and fleas to New York to live with his uncle as an illegal immigrant. As the story continues there are more secrets revealed. Solo covers up his dangerous and unhealthy ways of dealing with his anger and loneliness. Mr. Chetan has his own secret that he has lived his entire life trying to hide. Love is definitely the theme of the story. I found myself caring about each of the characters and feeling the emotion of their struggle and pain. The story brings to light how secrets destroy the individual and make it difficult for them to give or receive love. There were wonderful descriptions of Trinidad food, the landscape and the people and their culture. I look forward to more form Ingrid Persaud.

This novel was such a joy to read! The character development was top notch. Love them or hate them, you KNEW the characters.

I do think the first third was a little slow, but after Solo heads to NYC, things start to become more interesting. This is definitely a character driven story, so it may not be for everyone.

What I really appreciated most about this story, besides the incredibly beautiful cover, was that each character, despite his/her flaws, had at least one redeeming quality.

4.25/5 stars

I had so much trouble getting in to this book and did not connect with the characters at all. I had to DNF this one but would like to give it a try in the future and will update my review when I do.

Love after Love is an absolutely heartbreaking novel about family and about love. The love of a wife, a mother, a lover, a father figure, an uncle, a friend. First love, yearning for love, abusive love, unrequited love. Set on the island of Trinidad where the pace of life and expectations are so vastly different from elsewhere. Reading a story written in the island dialect was difficult at first but soon became very soothing and poetic to read. I generally prefer to read stories with happy endings even if a good share of the book is not happy. I can't say this book has a happy ending but it was still a pleasure to read ☺

After reading the book, I returned to the Walcott poem “Love After Love” and found the words “Give back your Heart / to itself” the embodiment of the theme of the novel. In her debut novel Persaud give tribute to Derek Walcott, who lived in Trinidad. Told in three voices, it is the story of a non-traditional Trinidadian family. First there’s Betty, who was raising her son, Solo after her drunken, violent, abusive husband fell down the stairs of their home and died. Mr. Chetan, the quiet, in-the-closet guy teacher who rents a room from her and becomes a surrogate husband to Betty and surrogate father to Solo gives us a look at the restrictive side of Trinidad-Tobago. And then there’s Solo, who when told the truth about his father’s death moves to New York City in anger. In the first part of the book, pain is replaced by love. But love isn’t easy. In the second, Betty struggles raising a teen-aged Solo. Mr. Chetan struggles with his sexual identity and Solo struggles with himself and his anger toward his mom. It’s the ending of the story that is most powerful. It takes the murder of Mr. Chetan for both Betty and Solo to understand the depth of love. Solo struggles to explain to others who Mr. Chetan is and how he is related to Mr. Chetan and it dawn on his what love is. As a reader who has visited many Caribbean Islands, I loved the voice that Ms. Persaud gives to Trinidad and the sly comparisons to other islands. My favorite line is the book is Betty’s advice to Mr. Chetan in finding love. “Do it while your teeth are in your mouth and not in a glass by the sink.” Love comes in many forms.

"They say child will eat the mother but you know mother will never eat child."

Love After Love magically captured the essence of life in Trinidad - the beauty of a country, the humor and generosity of a people all while telling the unfortunate and ugly side of alcoholism, domestic violence, and homophobia. Unfortunately, the middle section of this book lags a bit but that is more me nitpicking than anything else.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked that the author focused on a variety of forms of love and didn't make romantic, all-consuming love the sole basis of this story. The author's words flowed smoothly and the storyline kept me engaged. This was a great read!

What I liked; strong character development, foreign setting, good story. What I didn’t like; Trini language. I began to just learn to skip over words I didn’t know. That could be distracting. Thanks to Netgalley for providing an ARC for my honest review.

In Love After Love, Trinidadian author Ingrid Persaud challenges the reader's definitions of love and family by presenting Indo-Caribbean characters who are bound by intimacy as a means of comparison to the more traditional bonds of marriage and blood relations.
The plot begins when a single man, Mr. Chetan, moves in to share a house with a young widow and her son, Miss Betty and Solo. Their mutual need keeps them together and eventually, the relationship transcends what Betty and her husband had before he died. As the child grows, so do the adults' ease with each other, and deep secrets are revealed but the tight intimacy threatens everything around it and eventually, the relationship between mother and son groans under the weight.
Although the narrative includes violent descriptions of abuse and torture, and the perspective switches back and forth to follow each of the main characters over several years, this is not your typical coming-of-age novel and the plot development is not your average parent/child/step-parent drama. Instead, the twists and turns of this story broaches generational tendencies, LGBTQ awareness, mental health and immigration to name a few of the themes Persaud explores.
Love After Love thrills with Caribbean representation - from the vivid descriptions of flowers, food and Carnival to the step-by-step directions for how to season and cook local delicacies to the idiomatic expressions that pepper the characters' dialogue, to the rituals and customs uniquely practiced by Caribbean people of Indian descent, each page is an experience of Trinidad.
Readers should be aware that Love After Love is not a timidly-told tale. Indeed, Persaud boldly builds a house then sets it on fire and the graphic content she includes and the descriptions she brushes with, vary in intensity throughout the book. But while the narrative includes quite a bit of indigenous expression, the context makes it easy to read and only helps to add local flavor to the book.
Note: I received a free electronic Advanced Reader Copy of Love After Love from Penguin Random House and Netgalley in order to complete this review. I was not otherwise compensated and my statements above represent my honest opinion about this book.