It's 1976 and Jamaica is on fire. The country is on the eve of important elections and the warring political parties have made the divisions between the poor and the wealthy even wider. And Irie and Jilly come from very different backgrounds: Irie is from the heart of Kingston, where fighting in the streets is common. Jilly is from the hills, where mansions nestled within lush gardens remain safe behind gates. But the two bond through a shared love of Reggae music, spending time together at Irie's father's record store, listening to so-called rebel music that opens Jilly's mind to a sound and a way of thinking she's never heard before.

As tensions build in the streets, so do tensions between the two girls. A budding romance between them complicates things further as the push and pull between their two lives becomes impossible to bear. For Irie, fighting — with her words and her voice — is her only option. Blood is shed on the streets in front of her every day. She has no choice. But Jilly can always choose to escape.

Can their bond survive this impossible divide? (From St. Martin's Press)

Asha Ashanti Bromfield is a writer, actress, singer and producer of Afro-Jamaican descent. She is known for starring as Melody Valentine, drummer of Josie and the Pussycats in the television show Riverdale and as Zadie Wells in the Netflix show Locke and Key. Her YA novels include Hurricane Summer and Songs of Irie. She is from Toronto. CBC Books named Bromfield a Black Canadian writer to watch in 2022.

"In the beginning, I dealt with [the question of] who am I to tell this story? I wasn't there. I didn't live in the 1970s. And I just realized that's all an illusion. These are my stories. They're my people, my family, you know? And if I don't tell them, who will? So that was my saving grace of like, what if it didn't go like this? It went something like this based off the research that I did, and if I were living in that time I feel like these are characters that would have existed. I also feel like a lot of the political history that happens in it is pretty on the nose.

"I hope that through my stories, Black girls find a bit more humanity and a bit more redemption, like their struggles aren't in vain [and] that they're not alone, because I think sometimes that journey can feel very lonely. And I hope that my books also inspire young girls to tell their stories and know that they have a story worth telling."