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Review below/spoiler warning

firstly want to say I got approved for an arc of this book by netgalley I exchange for review.

wow where do I start with this book it was an emotional, powerful and a  tear jerker of a book that follows the story of Jay a Filipino-American who was close with his cousin Jun who is from the Philippines and who they exchanged letters though when they were young t since they live across the world from each other until 4 years ago when Jun disappeared from home under unknown circumstances. this story also starts where Jay finds out from his family  that Jun has been killed in the streets in the Philippines due to being seen taking or giving out drugs. which is a law that was made by the latest president of the Philippines where if any of his secret army catch anyone with drugs or giving out drugs will get killed, which is such a tragic law that still happens to this day in the Philippines.

so Jay decides to travel to the Philippines to live with his aunts and uncles for a few days to try and learn more about what happens to his best friend/cousin ad to keep his memory alive for him. but when he gets to the Philippines and meets Jun’s family they don’t even talk about their son/brother and try and act like he wasn’t alive in the first place. as we go through the story we see lots of cracks begin to show and more information comes out of the woodworks and takes Jay on a journey throughout the whole of the Philippines which Mia who is Grace.Jun’s sisters friends who we get introduced to early on into the book and also Grace and they all try and find out the whole truth of what happened to Jun and once they do its so tragic and emotional. 

one thing I loved about this book was learning about the culture and the many significant places that are used/seen throughout this book and just the beautiful descriptions of the places the characters take throughout this story. especially in one part of the book Jay and Mia go into the poorer part of the Philippines and the way Randy describes the slums is just in a beautiful way.

another significant part I loved from this book is the characters and how diverse they were from his two Aunties who are in a relationship with each other which I nice surprise to see LGBTQ+ themes in this book and also loved that we had Filipino American characters and Filipino Chinese character which was Jays auntie Ines, who for me was one of my favourite characters excluding Jay because he was my ultimate favourite but just loved how loveable and caring she and Chato were with the all their family and friends.

one character  didn’t like even though I know your basically meant to not like him was Tato Maning who was just not a nice character and he was mainly horrible to all his family and all the people around him and I would say he was a very flawed character which I do love I shall say. even though he does have a turn around at the end I still couldn’t like him. and also Jays father I didn’t like at points because I just wanted him to just comfort his son and to help him out in many ways.

overall if you couldn’t tell but this book was a emotional story that on one page you could be smiling then the next its just pulls at your heartstrings and make you just feel so tearful. this is a important book that I feel needs to be read by everyone and if u want to know more about the Filipino culture and learning some interesting things about the laws over in the Philippines this is a book that has all that thrown in-between this beautiful story. 5/5 stars and anything Randy brings out I’m definitely going to be buying them all now.

This book gets released on Thursday 27 June in the uk