Verse novels are some of my favourites so this was such a pleasure to read! The tension between faith and sexuality is such a common case for many teens growing up in Christian and non Christian households that adhere to conservative values without allowing kids to feel comfortable exploring themselves. The intersection with trauma and a contentious relationship with Ada and her parents made the story all the more compelling. I do feel like aspects of trauma could have used more nuance so as to approach touchy subjects with more care but I was fully not disappointed with the context provided. The time transitions were an interesting touch as well considering books written in verse tend to make a timeline more complex. I found I was able to keep up with no problems. This was such a great book!

A story told in verse of a girl trying to find herself, her sexuality, all while trying to be what her Nigerian family want her to be. It’s about relationships with parents, herself, and others. Heading to college without being under the scope of her family, the main character gets to break out of her “made up imagine”. I loved this book through and through, and while it’s a coming of age book, it hit me hardest reading it as a parent and how damaging the pressures we put on our children even when we want the best for them. Would highly recommend!

Every Body Looking by Candice Iloh; Dutton Books, 403 pages ($17.99) Ages 14 to 18.

Candace Iloh, a first-generation Nigerian-American writer, makes a stunning debut with this brilliant coming-of-age tale written in free verse, of a young woman weighed down by family expectations, going off to college, on her own for the first time and struggling in an unfamiliar environment to figure out who she is and what she really wants. It's one of 10 books nominated for the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Called Ada, meaning "first daughter," she is the daughter of a Nigerian immigrant and an African-American mother, a needy, difficult woman mostly absent from her life due to her addiction. ("ADA (Aah-dah!) in the Igbo language/means first daughter/means oldest girl/means pressure/means you are expected/to do a lot of things/you don't want to do/because the honor of this family/rests on your back.") The novel begins with high school graduation, seeing her mother for the first time in five years, awkward moments with her mother and her father and his new wife.

Her past is revealed in flashbacks, in the eloquent voice of her younger self, and includes being raped at age 6 by a cousin, a trauma she keeps secret; a frightening surprise trip with her father to a therapist; the arrival during sixth grade of her aunt from Nigeria who takes over her bedroom, starts monitoring all her activities and reading her private journal.

Her devoted but demanding father, a devout Christian, wants her to study accounting after she wins a scholarship to a Historically Black College; she finds herself drawn to dance instead.

College brings new trauma, including predatory males seeking out freshman girls, a first visit to the gynecologist, dull accounting classes, acute loneliness. ("When people talk about college/they never really talk about/how you're going to/change before/your whole family's eyes/and they're not/going to be happy about it/instead/they'll ask you/what's that thing in your nose?/where'd you get those words from?/have you forgotten how to call home?/when's the last time/you prayed, huh?")

Iloh, herself a dancer, depicts a stirring transformation, through liberating movement on the dance floor, as Ada breaks free to make her own choices.

Absolutely poignant and lyrical writing that teens and new adult readers will completely relate to. Written in verse, this is a fast read that packs a big punch. This novel is about a teen going away to HBCU school and some flashbacks to her growing up. The main character is Nigerian American and the daughter of an immigrant. She is also dealing with her mother's addiction. Ada just wants to find her own voice and escape the expectations that are on her shoulders. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo

Man, the writing was so beautiful and written in verse? Amazing. I don’t know when I told myself that I didn’t read poetry because I really picked this one up with a quickness after hearing about it and I am so glad to have finally given it a listen. This book tackles a few serious topics and I thought they were written so well. I could feel Ada’s inner turmoil, her want to follow a dream, and while I kind of wished for more, it’s only because I was so invested in Ada and need to know that she’s ok!!

EVERY BODY LOOKING by Candice Iloh is an impressive coming of age debut novel told in verse. The main character, Ada, is off to a historically black college and facing all of those important life moments about learning who she really is. Ada explains, "you start growing / further away from / what used to be home // you go looking for somewhere / that lets you be / what's inside your head // you go find a way to get back / to your own history lesson / to your own way of being alive." One key aspect to which students will relate is whether (and how) her interest in dance should be pursued. Another is her sexuality, with echoes of the consequences of childhood trauma. Through flash backs to first, second, sixth grade and high school, readers cannot help but feel strong emotions related to Ada and her life experience: "Crying is stupid when it is over a boy or the group of girls who you just wanted to like you enough to make you their friend." There is the culture shock related to her peers at college "I know nothing / but this city // but my father / but these schools / where I've always // been one of few specks / of dingy brown / in a sea of perfect white" and to their family life ("fussin / over homework they need to do") versus her own dealing with her mother's addiction, an domineering father and an aunt who does not respect her privacy. Given its format, one can read this book relatively quickly, but savor it - there is much to contemplate and discuss. EVERY BODY LOOKING received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus.

I'm a sucker for a good novel in verse.

I'm a sucker for a good coming of age story.

It's no surprise that I loved this story, heartbreaking as it can be at times, about Ada, who is finally able to embrace who she is when she enrolls at Howard University. As she navigates this first year of college, readers get flashbacks that show how she dealt with her sexuality, experienced sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, and lived with the expectations of her immigrant father. At Howard, old wounds start to heal as she begins to rediscover and embrace who she truly is.

Every Body Looking is a quietly fierce coming-of-age novel in verse about Ada, a Nigerian-American teen. Writer Candice Iloh’s debut novel tells the story of a young woman who begins to find her liberation and healing when she leaves her well-meaning and very religious father and her toxic mother to attend Howard University. We meet Ada several pivotal points; the narrative is organized around important scenes from grade school through college.

Ada is eager to negotiate the world of faith and obligation that is so much a part of a first-generation immigrant’s story. There are also wounds in her past that she would like very much to erase and to forget, though it is not as easy as simply deciding to forget.

Ada is a witty, insightful girl who doesn’t yet know is also her own power – she just needs to unlock it. The way Black girls are taught their power is usually through their proximity to a heterosexual union – Ada is no exception. She tries out her power this way freshman year, both by working an ill-fated job as an assistant for the basketball team and becoming a bit of a cliché by dating one of the silly boys on the team, Derek.

“Some of the themes that are really really exciting about this book are the ability for a creative artform to open us up and show us ourselves,” Iloh says in a Vimeo message about the novel. “Also, queer friendship, queer love, and a really really big theme is healing.”

The real beauty and the turning point in Every Body Looking comes when Ada finds herself transfixed by Kendra, a dancer who she watches secretly before she is discovered and the two become friends. Their bond grows as something a bit more intimate than friendship as Ada finally sees in Kendra a kind of mirror. Through Kendra’s free-spirited and bold demeanor, Ada gets a taste of how it feels to fly; to learn just how much is possible if she can let go of the familial expectations, the weight of her past, and her own personal ruminations long enough to let herself become the magical girl that she has been drawing since she was a kid.

Lyrical, insightful, and searing, Every Body Looking is a modern update to classic fairy tales where some knight comes to save the day. Here, Ada is her own knight in shining armor – with every nudge from Kendra, from the universe, from a very realistically portrayed dance teacher, Torion, she begins to free herself more and more to let go and become the best of herself. Through chapters that alternate back and forth through time, we see her exploring her sexuality with another girl in middle school, the tension that creates with her familial and personal belief system, the constant messages that Ada internalizes about how important it is to hide her real self and to explore (or even learn) what she really wants in favor of doing what it is that everyone else around her – or everybody watching – wants her to do.

"Naturally, when we go away from home, a lot of things start to come up when we meet new people,” Iloh says about Ada’s character. “We start to have our first relationships, have all these first time experiences, that surprisingly have us reckon with our childhood and our triggers and our traumas. And that's exactly what happens to her.”

The insecurities, the self-consciousness, the self-blame, and the lack of grace that distinguishes so much of young adulthood are thoroughly captured in each delicate, carefully considered verse. Ada is not rebellious but she has her moments – namely in relation to her parents and their partners.


It is somewhat difficult to have a total view of Ada’s relationship to her first-generation status and how she negotiates her African identity once she’s at an HBCU in Every Body Looking. So much of her internal struggle and journey seems to rest on seeing herself in a different, American, and perhaps African-American context. But once she arrives in Washington, D.C. for school, this part of her identity becomes further interrogated through flashbacks and correspondence with family. Despite the leap forward towards her liberation, the narrative arc in Every Body Looking is a familiar, important, and necessary one: We are the only ones who can give ourselves permission to be free and to soar.

Kendra alone seems to be the one person close enough to Ada’s dreams and her heart to see her clearly enough and also to speak this truth when Ada seems too scared to pursue it. It’s not clear in Every Body Looking what, exactly, Ada is so terrified of when it comes to her liberation – maybe it's that she will no longer belong to her family in the ways they have always expected. But, regardless, she’s changed and there’s no going back. These are aspects of the narrative that don’t need to be resolved for readers to enjoy the journey Candice Iloh creates with her poetic prose. Every Body Looking still reads as both grounded and ethereal throughout. Besides, Black girls deserve open-ended freedom as they come of age now more than ever.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/candice-iloh-every-body-looking

I love a well-written book in verse and this did not disappoint. At times heartbreaking and in others heartwarming, but ultimately a beautiful human story.

It's been a while since I read a novel in verse, and I enjoyed Every Body Looking! It was the perfect format for this story, and I loved reading about Ada's journey. I really struggled with college, and this book was so relatable. It was stressful to read at times, but in a good way. It's well-written, and Ada feels like such a realistic character. There are some heavy topics in here, and everything is handled well. The ending was a bit abrupt, and I thought it was going to continue, but it wasn't too off-putting. I recommend checking this book out, and I'll be looking for whatever Candice Iloh does next!

CW - sexual abuse

I’m not going to give this a star rating because I don’t know how to rate books written in verse, but “Every Body Looking” is a truly powerful story about Ada attending college and embarking on a new journey of discover. The author’s prose told the story so well and made it all the more meaningful and important. The author ties in elements from Ada’s past along with her future, which really made Ada feel more realistic than I think characters usually are in verse. This book does deal with rape and verbal abuse so I would be aware of that before going into it, though the story isn’t focused on either subject. I don’t want to talk too much about the content because there is so much that goes into forming the story and I think it should just be read and appreciated rather than summarized. This is a hopeful, empowering story that I would recommend for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo.

Books in verse can be frustrating! This one is no exception. Every Body Looking is a wonderful coming into yourself story about a girl names Ada. She has to juggle the expectation upon expectation that has been put on her from family and her culture. I wanted to read more but the verse styles does not leave room for fleshing out stories. However, this is still excellent, it is powerful, and would recommend it.

Thank you Netgalley for a e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not usually a novels in verse kinda girl, but this one had all this Black Girl Magic on the cover, and I knew I needed to have it. And sure enough, while reading it, I fell for it more and more!

This coming of age novel tells the story of Ada, a Nigerian girl who is trying her best to navigate through her mother's addiction, her dad and his new girlfriend, and starting her life in a historically Black College. She runs into all types of things as she realizes some of these dreams are not hers at all.
The best thing about this was hands down the writing style. Not necessarily the way the poems were written, but more so what they actually said. Alot of these poems were hella deep, and not at all what I was expecting when I started this. It definitely had me in my feels at some points too. For instance, I don't like books that cover addiction of any kind, but this book showed it without really showing it on the page. I recognized some of the signs from the things my own family member used to do, but it wasn't enough to trigger me like other books have.


What I didn't care for was the length and the plot. The whole thing was really slow. I know it's because this is a coming of age novel and we had to look at her life and how she got back to this point and things like that, but it was really long. At some points I thought they could have left them out. It was for lack of a better term, really long winded, but it was definitely still good.


This book was not what I was expecting, but it was still good. The ending showed a brave character, completely changed from how she was in the beginning of the book. This coming of age novel is one that I can see being very popular as teens navigate their new life during their first year of college.

Every Body Looking is a novel in verse. There was a little difficulty in the jumping back and forth that made it sometimes hard to follow the story. Those looking for a novel in verse will likely enjoy this book. I find that the verse is sometimes a distraction for me so I do not often read that style of novel. Thank you NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was an amazing and outstanding coming of age journey. The MC struggles with her culture, while also struggles with discovering who she is as a person and what is expected of her. She had so many tough things put on her shoulders that would be hard for anyone to carry.

The story is written in verse and has a powerful presence. That may sound odd for a reader to say but the writing style makes this a quick read, but it certainly was not an easy read. This is a story I won't soon forget this but I do recommend to all readers.

It might be that despite some particular standouts, novels in verse just don't work particularly well for me. I found myself wanting more to the story because I could feel how interesting so many of the aspects were - being raised by a single father who supports her in some ways and hems her in in others, the tenuousness and variability of Ada's relationship with her mother, attending an HBCU after being in a majority white school - but didn't feel that the format gave enough room to flesh things out. Even as Ada narrates her most private or traumatizing moments, her deepest feelings, I never really felt that I connected with her much as a character. I do think, though, that this might be a case of YMMV, and many readers could get much more from the book.

Really loved that this book was told in verse. Very fast- paced and I loved the different timelines. The main character Ada had a lot of growth throughout the story. Excited to see Ada's next journey and where it takes her. There is a mention of sexual abuse so be wary of that.

Ada is a girl struggling silently. The daughter of a Nigerian father and a mostly absent addict mother, she grows up just trying to discover who she is. She is black. She is "fat." She is a good girl. A smart girl. But WHO is she?

With no real friends to speak of and being told what to do, who to be, what to believe in, she cannot wait to move on. After her high school graduation, she attends a black college where she is hoping to make a new life for herself. She struggles in her classes, struggles trying to keep up with social constricts, when all she wants to do is dance.

She meets Kendra, another dancer, who befriends her and introduces her to a whole new world of dance, classes and instructors, where Ada can finally be herself. But, still she struggles. Caught between what her dad wants, what her mom wants, what her professors want, what teenage boys want, she struggles to find what SHE wants.

This was told in verse, but also goes back and forth between present day and through different times in her younger years, all which paint an abstract picture of who she is and what has happened to her- the events in her life that have brought her to where she is now and the person she is.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Through the whole book, I was waiting for Ada to step up and finally do something for herself. To finally do what it was that SHE wanted to do. By the end, I realized that it wasn't about what I wanted for her or what I thought she should do. I had to sit back and let Ada tell the story- let Candice Iloh tell the story. I went into this not realizing it was in verse. Not realizing that there were things talked about that were truly heavy. But I ended up LOVING it and feeling better for knowing that piece of Ada, knowing Magic!

I can't remember the last time I read a book in verse/poetic style and wasn't sure how it would resonate for me as I typically find poetry hard to review. However, when you have 416 pages of a lyrically beautiful story, it felt like listening to the most beautiful song that told you a very important story. I found myself fascinated and read it in its entirety without ever getting up from my couch.

Ada's story is told in nonlinear style as we see her growing up under the weight of enormous expectations. Her father's strong Christian values, her mother's addiction, the cruelness of her fellow students, the confusing abuse at the hands of someone unexpected.... she just wants to dance and even that is frowned upon. When she leaves for College and not surrounded by all of this, she still struggles to find her footing but is ever so grateful for the freedom being away from home finally provides.

This certainly is not an easy story to read at times and I do wish we got maybe a bit more in depth of her childhood and some very heavy issues to make the story feel a bit more complete. However, the writing is strong and you absolutely feel for Ada all the way through. It was such a pleasure to see Ada grow and I was so engrossed that I was surprised when it ended and wanted more! Plus, how gorgeous is this cover?

This is a wonderful coming of age tale in verse about Ada and the tension between doing what she wants as she enters the freedoms of a college campus and the values with which she was raised. Additionally, she must struggle with her tenuous relationship with her mother, her own childhood traumas, and the expectations of being the daughter of a Nigerian immigrant. The format of this books is wonderful, and I appreciated the breaks signifying the changes in time from recalling her past to the present.
There is so much subtlety and nuance in Iloh’s writing and I enjoyed the steady pacing throughout. However, my only critique is the end, which I felt left me in anticipation—like cutting off a song in the middle of the crescendo. I would have loved to see the blossoming of Ada’s relationship with Kendra. The end felt like the cliffhanger I did not want because I was enjoying this story so much! Other than that, I did not want to put it down (or, in this case, stop scrolling). I cannot wait for the next one and what Iloh’s Magic has to offer!