{"product_id":"leave-your-mess-at-home-isbn-9780593834190","title":"Leave Your Mess at Home","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Tolani Akinola is a gifted, powerful new voice in American fiction.”—Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eReal Americans\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"A warm, smart, hilarious, delicious, riveting\" (Curtis Sittenfeld) debut about the uncomfortable, unbreakable ties of family as four adult siblings come home to confront the state of their own lives and each other\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Longe siblings are really botching their parents' American Dream.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSola 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnjola 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSola’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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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 poignant, \u003ci\u003eLeave Your Mess At Home\u003c\/i\u003e is an insightful debut about 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?\u003cb\u003eA Most Anticipated Book of 2026: \u003ci\u003eSheReads, HelloBeautiful\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A stunning debut that does not shy away from the messiness of young adulthood and the chaos of discovering who you are. It balances the complexity of navigating a question that haunts most children of immigrants: what do we owe to our families and what do we owe to ourselves?”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eElectric Lit\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An incredible and moving debut centered on one family's dysfunction that probes questions of familial belonging and duty, immigration and identity, harm and healing . . . With great care and no small amount of humor, Akinola explores the hidden toll of secrets and buried resentments over decades spent loving one another within the bounds of a messy, imperfect family. Heartfelt and heartbreaking.”\u003cb\u003e —Kerry McHugh, \u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I already know \u003ci\u003eLeave Your Mess at Home\u003c\/i\u003e will be one of my (and your?) favorite books of 2026—it's such a warm, smart, hilarious, delicious, riveting messed-up-adult-siblings novel and I totally loved it\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e”\u003cb\u003e—Curtis Sittenfeld\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003eNYT bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eRomantic Comedy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Tolani Akinola is a gifted, powerful new voice in American fiction. Her writing is sharp and wonderfully textured—capturing the nuances and complexities and, yes, messiness of the relationships within one immigrant family, in every permutation. There are multiple messes in \u003ci\u003eLeave Your Mess At Home\u003c\/i\u003e; I loved reading about every one of them. This is a novel that captures the reality of our imperfect ways of loving—and reminds us that love still matters.”\u003cb\u003e —Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eReal Americans\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Leave Your Mess at Home is a shimmering, consuming, exuberant debut that is just bursting with life. Tolani Akinola is a born storyteller.”\u003cb\u003e—Jenny Jackson, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of Pineapple Street\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Leave Your Mess At Home has all the long-buried secrets, simmering rivalries, and siblings failing at adulthood you could want from a family drama. It has all the love, sex, and scandal you could ask from a page-turner. It’s full of smart, generous, timely exploration of issues of immigration, race, class, violence, gender, sexuality, social media, generational dynamics…this book covers a lot of impressive ground. In short, whatever you love in a novel, you’ll find it in this one. Tolani Akinola’s debut has it all.”\u003cb\u003e—Laurie Frankel,\u003ci\u003e New York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThis Is How It Always Is \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFamily, Family\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What a thrill to read a novel so alive. I tore through it, laughing out loud, aching for the Longe siblings as they unraveled, rooting for them like they were mine. Tolani Akinola writes family estrangement with such honesty and insight, capturing the ways we push away the people we love to protect ourselves, yet still reach back for them. \u003ci\u003eLeave Your Mess at Home\u003c\/i\u003e is vibrant, incisive, and hilarious, a truly remarkable debut.”\u003cb\u003e —Essie Chambers, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eSwift River\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There's more than one way to hold family shame and the Longe siblings prove that in Tolani Akinola's wise, funny, and engrossing debut. This is the kind of book I'm always hoping to find in the bookstore. Funny, insightful, and full of drama that had me torn between racing to the end and savoring every sentence. I was charmed by the Longe siblings, even as they broke each other's hearts.”\u003cb\u003e—Aisha Muharrar, author of \u003ci\u003eLoved One\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eLeave Your Mess At Home\u003c\/i\u003e, all hell breaks hilariously and heartbreakingly loose for the Longe family before the healing finally crawls in. Funny, fraught, and incredibly relatable, this one is for you—for every one of us. Familial estrangement, the trials and tribulations of assimilation, devious deacons, a mother’s betrayal, the pain of complicity, the costs of perfectionism, the relief of reconciliation, whatever your jam, you will find it in this novel.”\u003cb\u003e—Chinelo Okparanta, author of \u003ci\u003eUnder the Udala Trees \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eHarry Sylvester Bird\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“[Leave Your Mess at Home] is a family drama that doesn’t lean too hard into sentimentality . . . The dialogue is realistic, and at times provides the novel with welcome doses of humor. . . Akinola handles difficult themes with grace.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e —Kirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Eldest daughter syndrome meets the social media era with a twist on a lovely Chicago bridge.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eHelloBeautiful\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eTolani Akinola is a Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow. She holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MPH from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She lives outside of Atlanta.","brand":"Pamela Dorman Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233326117093,"sku":"NP9780593834190","price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593834190.jpg?v=1767731250","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/leave-your-mess-at-home-isbn-9780593834190","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}