Oh, this is fun! It's basically teen soap opera, set on the Ivory Coast. Aya and her family live in a working class neighbourhood. Her dad's a manager for a beer company, her mum's a secretary, and there are two younger siblings. Aya dreams of being a doctor, and is always having to turn down invitations in order to study. Her boy-crazy best friends, Bintou and Adjoua, are far less scholarly, and are primarily interested in sneaking out for romantic encounters and dancing.

I read some of Abouet's graphic novels for kids last year, and they were fun too, so I thought I'd try this - one of her goals in writing books like this, so the introduction says, is to produce a depiction of a part of Africa that's more than the lazy stereotypes usually put forth by mainstream media. Everything here is so familiar - from the feckless teenagers to the put-upon parents to the nuisance cat-callers in the street - that Abouet's clearly been successful, I think. The setting is different, but the drama's the same.

I have to admit, there seems, in this first book in the series, far more focus on the two party girls than on Aya herself. And the girls are fun, and recognisable, but I was much more of an Aya myself as a teen, so I'd have liked to see more of an emphasis on her. Maybe in the next book, though! And hey, at least she doesn't end up knocked up, and married to a boy so limply ineffectual that even his parents think he's a loser. So, you know, she's kind of winning so far.