Lionheart Girl by Yaba Badoe
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Black Authors, Black Characters, OwnVoices Representation, Emotion Magic, Magic Users, Magical Realism, Shapeshifters, Witches, Vision impairment, West African Culture
My Rating:
Published on: 14th October 2021
Pages: 336
Disability Representation: Loss of vision.
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African myth and magic beat in the dark heart of this fable about witchcraft, superstition, the bonds we choose and those we cannot.

Born into a family of West African witches, Sheba's terrified of her mother who is deadly dangerous. But like mother, like daughter – magic runs through her blood and Sheba discovers powers of her own.

Her touch can unravel people's innermost thoughts; their hopes, their fears – their secrets. Sheba too can shape-shift. Through the communion of ancient magic, blood and friendship, she slowly uncovers the murderous truth about her stolen childhood and steels herself for the future. She must protect the hunted from the hunter – her mother.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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I wanted to like Lionheart Girl a lot more; however, it’s another book listed as fantasy when it is more accurately magical realism. The fantasy elements are wrapped up within realism, hidden in word play rather than just coming out and saying exactly what is happening. It was exhausting to read at times because I had to try to work out exactly what was being said.

I had thought that Lionheart Girl was a book about shapeshifters, or at the very least, witches that could change shape. It’s not, which was disappointing. I enjoyed the folklore and the world-building, I just wish the author had come out and said this was this and that was that. It’s explained that there is an evil, yet the evil is never given a name. It’s just danced around.

About Yaba Badoe

Yaba Badoe is an award-winning Ghanaian-British documentary film-maker and writer. A graduate of King’s College Cambridge, she was a civil servant in Ghana before becoming a general trainee with the BBC. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. Her short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly, African Love Stories, an anthology edited by Ama Ata Aidoo, and Daughters of Africa. Yaba lives in Balham, London with her husband Colin Izod.

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Thanks for reading my review for Lionheart Girl by Yaba Badoe.

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