Story Bites YA: My Life as a Chameleon

Story Bites YA is our discussion book club for readers aged 11-14, with an interest in new YA fiction and who want to share and grow their ideas with others through discussion and thought-provoking activities.

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We meet in the emporium on the first Sunday of the month at 4:30pm. Everyone has a copy of the book to read in advance of the session and booking is essential as we have limited spaces. The book is available the month before.

About the book:

My Life as a Chameleon by Diana Anyakwo

Lily is a sixteen-year-old living in Manchester. It is nearly five years since her father's death, and she is soon to return to her birthplace in Nigeria to reunite with her mother and siblings for the anniversary. As cold rain thunders on the streets of Moss Side she looks back over her young life and wonders... how did she get here?

As a young girl in Lagos, Lily is the baby of her large family. The daughter of a Nigerian father and Irish mother, she lives in a dual reality: one where moments of bright colour and tenderness exist alongside a sense of danger just beneath the surface of her apparently idyllic life. This is a tension that nobody dares speak out loud and it teaches Lily an early lesson: always blend in, always play the right part. But the truth cannot stay hidden forever. Things in Lagos itself, and within her family, soon reach breaking point. As her city and her family implode into chaos around her, and at school her skin colour marks her out from the crowd, Lily struggles to know how to blend in. And when her mother sends her away to school in England, Lily's sense of identity is challenged in even more painful ways.