This was a tough book to read. Melbourne teen Karuna lives under the iron control of her mother, a first-generation Filipino-Australian who was abandoned by her Caucasian husband. You know that Karuna gets pregnant despite her mother’s best efforts and has a baby, because the book is narrated by Karuna and addressed to that baby (great framing device, by the way); however, you don’t know how events progress to that point, so you must read on to find out. As Karuna’s pregnancy progresses, her mother responds by exerting more and more control, until she is literally locking Karuna in their flat while she is away. On the one hand this is a touching tale of an immigrant mother’s struggle to do her best by her second-generation daughter, and her daughter’s fight to make her mother recognize her own agency; on the other hand this is also a story of toxic emotional abuse and generational pain, with the background of the sexism and racism directed at darker-skinned people in Australian society. The characters do make peace with one another eventually, but it is a hard and painful fight to get there.