Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn: EW review

The blazing sun is one sure thing in the Jamaica of Dennis-Benn’s harshly beautiful debut, but it bears down differently on the local shantytowns than it does on the privileged guests of Montego Bay’s airy, immaculate resorts. Hotel employee Margot, who straddles that disparity every day, is determined to pull herself and her teenage sister, Thandi, across the almost impossible divide, whether that means trading her body, her integrity, or even her own chance at real happiness. In saturated paragraphs and rich patois, Sun lays out the stark realities of an island whose entire economy relies on natural beauty, cheap labor, and limited resources—and explores what it means to live in a place where, as one character says, “nobody love a black girl. Not even harself.” A–