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Bitter Melon
- Author
- Liv Little
- Publisher
- John Murray Press
- Publish Date
- 22 October 2026
- Run Time
- 10 hours
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
She's running from heartbreak and a loss of her own; he's running out of time.
As they travel through sun-drenched towns and navigate tangled family roots, old wounds open and long-held silences begin to break. They're both trying to outrun something-but along the way, they cross paths with people whose stories shift their own, helping them face the past, reckon with the present and reimagine what comes next.
Bitter Melon is a tender, funny, heart-bruised road trip into memory, mortality and the fierce, fragile love between a daughter and the father she's still learning to understand.
Critics Review
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Liv Little pulls you into a world where the characters feel like everyone you've ever known, loved and learned. Bitter Melon is deftly written, full of heart and human nature's complexities.
Candice Carty-Williams
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Bitter Melon is an elegant, surprising and profoundly moving novel which wraps together themes of love, grief and rebirth against the lush, fiery setting of modern Jamaica. Jalissa and Delroy's roadtrip is as much about finding their way back to each other as it is about finding themselves. The realism of their love - the things that are said and left unsaid between a father and daughter who desperately want to know each other - is deeply affecting. A book that will break you apart, and make you whole again.
Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff
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Brilliant and moving and truly so wonderful. I laughed and cried, then I called my dad. It's tender and intimate. Gorgeous and very lovable. Liv writes with such honesty, depth and love. She is a true wonder with words. It also made me want to book a flight back to Jamaica immediately!
Lena de Casparis, ELLE
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Liv Little captures human experience with such a delicacy and beauty that it will break and heal your heart all at the same time. In Bitter Melon she captures grief and love with the same tender, unflinching hand. Funny, heartbreaking and unrelentingly alive, this book about what it means to get to know someone right before you lose them will change your life.
Scarlett Curtis
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A beautiful, tender story about the relationship between a father and daughter, the meaning of home, and finding your way back to yourself. Little captures Jamaica, forever home to me, so beautifully. Thank you for taking me there.
Shani Akilah
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So moving and unguarded and beautiful. I didn't want to miss a word
Lucy Boynton
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I loved this book! It's contemporary, questioning, relatable and deeply moving. I know this will touch so many readers. I couldn't put it down.
Emma-Louise Boynton
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A gorgeous depiction of a father-daughter relationship, teeming with love, grief and tenderness, this is an assured sophomore effort from Liv Little, a brightly burning beacon of the future of British literature.
Nikesh Shukla
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Liv Little is an incredible humanist, and it's in the smallest details of her characters that you feel it. I felt this book deep in my belly. Against the vivid landscape of Jamaica, Bitter Melon takes us into all the crunchy, complicated places of family and relationship, the beauty and the pain, the closeness and the disconnect. I smiled, I cried, and I was deeply, deeply touched.
Naomi Shimanda
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Beautiful and tender and raw and I loved it
Sharmadean Reid
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Bitter Melon is a warming, familiar somehow and testament to the importance of generational storytelling.
Gemma Cairney
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Liv Little
- Duration
- 10 hours
- Release Date
- 22 October 2026
- ISBN
- 9781405554299
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- John Murray Press
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Contemporary lifestyle fiction, Family life fiction / Stories about family, Narrative theme: identity / belonging, Narrative theme: sense of place, Narrative theme: love / relationships
Synopsis
Jalissa and her dad aren't close, but when he invites her to Jamaica, his homeland, for the first time, she says yes.She's running from heartbreak and a loss of her own; he's running out of time.As they travel through sun-drenched towns and navigate tangled family roots, old wounds open and long-held silences begin to break. They're both trying to outrun something-but along the way, they cross paths with people whose stories shift their own, helping them face the past, reckon with the present and reimagine what comes next.Bitter Melon is a tender, funny, heart-bruised road trip into memory, mortality and the fierce, fragile love between a daughter and the father she's still learning to understand.
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