A first love shouldn't bloom so fierce, you know? It shouldn't be like a fist forever clutched around the heart muscle... I didn't realise how bad I had it until he reappeared...

Singer-poet Gemma Weekes turns to prose with this dazzling first novel about love, set between London and New York one hot, sticky summer. Eden is locked in a state of mid-twenties adolescence - directionless, insecure and hopelessly obsessed with her first love. When Zed, the object of her affection, swoops into town, 'flash in every line of his body', spitting gangster rap and the most beautiful boy she's ever seen, she knows she must have him back. Paralysed by lust, Eden hangs out at Zed's gigs, squeezes into mini dresses and drops as many hints as a girl can without losing her dignity, but with no result. Zed's more interested in Max - a blonde with perfect bone structure and as white as toothpaste. But is Max the real reason these two can't get it together? As the story unfolds, glimpses of their St Lucian relatives and parents reveal that Eden and Zed have some serious history they need to face if they're ever to understand what real love is.

Gemma Weekes has a way with language that puts all the music, sweat, colour and raw emotion of a city night directly on to the page. Her dialogue fizzes with the spoken word, her character are intensely real. From Eden's Bible-bashing father to her mystical Aunt K and her rocker boyfriend Spanish, who smoulders with Black Pride, from Hackney to Brooklyn, Weekes brings to life a world of cross-cultural relationships, passion and pain that zings with life and reveals her to be a major new talent.

Books by Gemma Weekes