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Equal parts heartwarming and heart wrenching, Palaver is a story about family and acceptable that is unfortunately hindered by some of the writing choices.

Palaver follows a mother and son’s tense reunion in Japan after years of being estranged. It deals with subjects like sexuality, racism, abuse, homophobia, and mental illness. While Bryan Washington keeps much of the mother and son’s past fairly vague, he does a great job at making their relationship feel very real. The story is also full of several side characters who are all very likable and serve as mentors for the mother and son to not only evaluate their own relationship, but also the problems within themselves that have led them to this specific moment in time. Palaver has a bit of a slow start, but I was engaged throughout and felt very invested to follow these characters and their relationship through to the end.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, I did struggle with a few of the writing choices made in this book. My biggest gripe is that the mother and son are never named and are just referred to as “the mother� or “the son� throughout the entire novel. I felt it created too much distance between the reader and the characters, and found it difficult to connect with them. I was also thrown off by the lack of quotation marks when characters were speaking. There were many instances where I had to go back and reread a section because I didn’t realize a conversation was happening and got lost. Both of these issues I was able to overcome as I continued reading, but I can see them very off putting to other readers.

Ultimately, I give Palaver a solid 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4 for Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ) because, after sticking with it despite my initial complaints about the writing choices, I found it to be a compelling story that many people could connect with whether you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community or not.