Book Buzz: Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinola
“When I sat down to write this novel, it ended up going in a completely different direction than what I had intended. I’d originally wanted to write an unrequited love story. As I was writing the first few scenes, I was like, “Oh, these people actually both love each other, so that’s not working. Also, I really feel the need to explore how this character has come to love in this way, and to deny herself love in this way.
Then, her siblings hijacked my brain.
They all had very strong voices and personalities. In trying to understand the ways in which this character had learned to love, I needed to understand the family that they came from. I think that’s why they all emerged and forced their way onto the page.”
― Tolani Akinola, Interview, Indies Introduce, Bookweb
What booksellers are saying about Leave Your Mess at Home
- I have 2 siblings that I love with everything I have. They are my best friends, but they can also be the most complex relationship dynamics in my life. Family is messy for just about everyone, and Leave Your Mess at Home is a compelling story about 4 siblings and their messy family dynamics. Throughout this novel there is certainly something that anyone can relate to, and yet it is a unique thing altogether. This brilliant debut will stick with you. Well done Tolani Akinola!
― Annastasia, The Bottom in Knoxville, Tennessee | BUY
- This book gave me all the feels. I laughed, I cried, I was sad, and I was happy. I loved following each perspective of the siblings. Seeing how they each experienced their childhood differently although they grew up in the same household with the same parents. We see how they navigate adulthood while trying to heal in so form or fashion from their childhood. This novel also showcases how delicate a parental relationship can be.
― Kala, M Judson, Booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina | BUY
- Curtis Sittenfeld’s quote caught my attention on this one. I loved Leave Your Mess at Home! This one is snappy and smart. The perfect blend of contemporary fiction with excellent writing. A complicated family story about four siblings (I loved them all). I was immediately pulled in with a family estrangement – I had to know what happened and could not stop turning the pages. There is so much to discuss in this one – book club gold.
― Jessica, Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina | BUY
- At times heartbreaking and hilarious, this gorgeous debut novel introduces us to the Longe siblings and immediately we’re pulled into the mess of family secrets and estrangement. Whether it’s failing to live up to their mother’s unrealistic expectations for them or failing to understand themselves enough to know how to be happy, these characters are all going through some things. So relatable and so unputdownable.
― Melissa, E. Shaver, Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia | BUY
About Tolani Akinola
Tolani 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
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Julia Langbein says that the inspiration for her new novel, Dear Monica Lewinsky, came to her during a visit to the house where she grew up: “I had to go clear out my old childhood bedroom, and I found a diary from 1998 in which I had been disparaging of Monica Lewinsky in a way that was just very casual and normal for people at that time…It was this moment of compunction — we all recognize we had it wrong — but the writer in me was like, You’re picking up on some idea of Monica Lewinsky as a kind of saint whose public life completely fits with the stories of the early martyrs.” 
I know a lot of fairy tales.
Like I cut my teeth on them. I grew up reading lots of fairy tale collections, and I realized I could only with difficulty think of fairytales where women were friends, where women talk to each other, and where they weren’t antagonists to each other in some way. I know they’re there, but the fact that I could reach for 10 stories of women waiting for rescue or women waiting to be chosen or women seeking husbands or, you know, that sort of thing instead of a story of women setting out together to have adventures—which is really what I wanted to tell my 7 year old niece who is asking me for a fairy tale— It was very disturbing to me, and I just remember in that moment thinking I’m just going to make something up. I’m gonna make something up because I really want her to know that there is room in fairytales for girls to be friends.